The reality is that these grades will potentially affect the job you get for this summer, which in turn potentially affects your future jobs. Five years from now? It's probably not going to matter at all. Most people aren't going to get into Big Law, which means being top of your class might look pretty on a resume but it's unlikely anyone's going to ask. At some point in your career it will probably look pretentious to talk about it.
Here is my real concern: things are going to change. All year the faculty have commented on how great our class is. We all get along. We laugh, even during exam week. We're not overly cliquey, and we seem willing to help each other out. We're not overly competitive, either, at least not out loud. Professors keep commenting that everything will change once our first grades come out. New cliques will form. Old ones will break up. Friendships will be strained. The idea of this makes me miserable, because it's been such a great environment so far. It's hard to imagine it changing. There isn't anyone I don't like and as far as I know (even though I can be a tad annoying to some people, I'm sure) there isn't anyone who dislikes me.
Will tomorrow be the end of it all?
At my school, the only relationships that changed are between those who made Law Review and those who didn't, and not even everybody. There are a couple of arrogant asses who I really wish hadn't been validated by grading onto Law Review, but there you go. There are lots of great people on Law Review, too, who still talk to us peons.
ReplyDeleteAs for the rest of us - we all get along great. As long as you keep your actual grades a secret, and be vague about how you did - I did pretty well on Torts! I didn't do as well as I expected in Crim! etc. - I think you'll all be fine. I was also warned that my happy atmosphere would be ruined after grades came out last year, and we'd all get more competitive and mean once the class was ranked, but that really didn't happen at all.
I am sooo nervous about our first semester grades. But we won't know ours til the end of the month. Grr. But when we do get them, I'm planning on keeping them to myself. I know my classmates will ask each other what they got, and rumors will spread, so I'd rather not get involved. My grades are MINE, no one else's. We have enough to worry about this semester, why add to the stress?
ReplyDeleteDeep breaths.
ReplyDeleteI'm 10 years out of law school, I have no idea what my 1L grades where. I think they were fine, not spectacular, not awful. I was a middle of the pack girl.
It really will be ok.