Competition

The competitive aspect of law school is finally revealing itself to me. Why people feel the need to be so aggressive, I will never understand. I’ve never been a competitive person–I compete against myself and as long as I do my best, I don’t get mad at other people for doing better than me. Sure, I struggle sometimes with feelings of envy but what can I do? I’ll be me at the end of the day whether or not I decide to be happy about it.

What’s weird to me is everyone’s outright refusal to say what their grades were. Aside from things like, “my grades ranged 8 points” or “I’m in the middle” or “in Contracts I did a little above average” everyone is being maddeningly vague. I say “maddeningly” because a discussion about grades is meaningless without hard numbers! And what’s the worst that could happen anyway? I’ve never stalked the smartest person in the class (although I did avoid partnering for group projects with the dumbest). Is there really psychological warfare being waged on or amongst the top 10% of the class? It’s serious, but it’s not that serious. Also, my undergrad is known for being super hard and since everyone did miserably in at least one class (we’re talking about curves where a 65 is an A and a 40 will get you a solid C. No lie), we all commiserated about our seemingly imminent failure. I really don’t get why everybody is so cagey, who knew law students were so paranoid?

Undoubtedly, landing a summer internship has made me feel better about my own grades. Although I wasn’t depressed about them (like one girl I heard about who damn near had a nervous breakdown), I definitely think that they could use some improvement. In an effort to make myself stand out, I entered the 1L/2L closing argument competition. The preliminary rounds were yesterday and I got mostly positive feedback. I felt like I was in over my head after getting the packet so I’m glad I made a good showing–but I hate competitions so I’m lowkey hoping I didn’t advance to the next round. Of course, I signed up for it to challenge myself thinking I would do horribly and get cut first thing, but we’ll see.