Thursday, January 10, 2008

Law school gets harder?

Word on the street is that second semester of first year is among the most difficult. Of course, everyone here seems to think that the most difficult semester is the current one — except for second-semester 3Ls. There is a good deal of senioritis going around. One of my 3L roommates just signed up for Admiralty Law. I think I may buy him an eye patch and offer my foam sword for him to take to class.

Lots of things are happening at once. My classmates and I are simultaneously working on: three new classes, including an extra day of Con Law (15 credits this semester vs. 14 credits last semester); applying and interviewing for summer jobs, which takes a great deal of time; Moot Court tryouts, which start next week; mandatory Legal Skills workshops and legal research labs; fellowship work; and other assorted law school activities. Oh yeah, and there's having a life. When we have time. Mostly we don't.

The two topics of conversation right now are grades (which keep on trickling in online) and presidential politics. Some people freely reveal their grades, while others just express disappointment. I haven't heard anyone say that they got an A yet. The ones who disclose tend to be people who got Bs, which makes some sense. The curve here is such that the largest number of students get Bs, so getting a B is nothing to be ashamed of, nor is it something to be particularly proud of. Getting a B means you're on your way to graduation, but it also means that you're probably not going to graduate in the Top 10%.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Second semester 1L year is the hardest emotionally . . . you have either realized your hopes for class rank, moot court, jobs, etc. or you haven't. Odds are, you missed at least one of those goals and that disappointment, with so much hard work stretching on ahead, can be really draining for a LOT of people.

First semester 2L is more brute hard work, though. YMMV.

Anonymous said...

As for your roommate all I have to say is this....arrrrrrrgh, matie! Go ahead, use that line a million times this coming semester, he asked for it.