Law Students

Is there anything more awkward than…..

By Steve Pirates

…a law school “grades party”?

Yesterday was grades day. As I posted from Contracts, everyone was anxiously awaiting the 4:00 p.m. release time. Sadly, Contracts was scheduled between 2:40 and 3:55. As such, I can safely say that almost no one was really paying any attention. Wisely, our professor included in his lecture a wide array of examples and cases on UCC remedies. I suspect this will be heavily tested, and was in part calculated to reward those students who could shrug off grades jitters and stay focused.

Personally, I was happy that Contracts would run until 3:55. I as happy for anything to get my mind off of the impending “reveal”. Still, my thoughts were frequently drifting to the various grades scenarios. I had found the exams to be very difficult, which seemed to be the common consensus. I figured that put me out of contention for the most extreme grades on either side of the curve. I figured that had I felt the exams were easy then either I had crushed them, or completely missed the point. Since I did not feel they were easy, neither of those two had happened. So that left me anywhere in the gigantic nebulous middle of the curve, with no indication of whether I had done well enough to keep my hopes of law review alive, or my hopes of maintaining my scholarship, or even my hopes of not getting curved-out of law school. I was very happy that we were going to be in Contracts until 3:55.

Then disaster struck. Our professor let us out at 3:30.

As everyone filed out the door, I noticed that my friends Christine (of Otter Bees fame) and Brad were hanging around in class. Turns out, they felt the same way I did. For the next 20 minutes we talked about nothing in particular while we waited for our grades to be opened and our fates to be sealed. At 4:00, Brad went home and Christine and I went into separate rooms to check our grades. Then… nothing. They weren’t up.

At 4:01 p.m. (one full minute late!) our grades were released.

Cal Western had set up a reception at The Local, timed to coincide with the release of grades. After checking our grades, Christine and I decided to walk over to see who was there.
We were some of the first people there. As more and more people came in, the awkwardness quotient of the room went sky high. It was obvious that everyone wanted to know how everyone else did. Almost every conversation started out with probing questions like “So, how are you feeling?” or “Are you doing ok?” or the more audacious “So, how did you do?”. After that, almost every conversation turned into a discussion on whether people were supposed to talk about grades, or not, or how specific to be. As people started adding alcohol into the equation, general hilarity ensued.

I left pretty early to go spend some quality time with my fiance. The past two days I had been a mass of nerves, and probably less than fun to hang out with. It’s nice to be able to go through law school with someone so supportive.

For those wondering, while I didn’t do well enough to register JollyBestStudentEvar.com I won’t be registering JollyMedStudent.com any time soon either.

Well, at least not until second semester grades come out in May.

Cheers to everyone for surviving semester one and the grades fallout.

Full post as published by Jolly Lawger on January 26, 2008 (boomark / email).