A word to the 1Ls

Your grades are coming out soon – today or tomorrow, I forget which.  As a friend recently pointed out, they’re going to suck.  Approximately 15% of the class will be happy with them: the students in the top 10% and the 5% students who are just damn-fucking-happy to be here, at Georgetown, so happy that it does not matter what their grades are.

I fall uneasily in the second camp, for all of my critiques of the pedagogy and evaluative methods of law school.  I do love it here, and I am mightily impressed with my peers and friends.

Please remember – you will get a job, you won’t end up living under a bridge.  If it won’t be in the city you want, it will be in the region you want; and if it’s not exactly what you want to be doing it will be damn close.  A huge minority of associates don’t stick with their first job beyond a few years anyway, so it’s not like you’re locked into a life of doom and legal drudgery at Sid’s Law and Muffler Shop.

As much as I have problems with Stoicism, please remember, there’s an arbitrary element to grades, and all they’re really telling you is what you know anyway – that you’re in the same ballpark as your peers; better on some things, worse on others.  They don’t measure your worth as a person.  (So don’t act, positively or negatively, as though they do.)  They also don’t measure your knowledge of the law against an objective standard.  They also don't measure your future ability to be a lawyer or even begin to assess the myriad of skills that you can bring to bear on lawyering.  Grades are just points on a curve relative to your peers. 

If you find yourself freaking out, have a beer (or two), sit down, and think about all the worthwhile things you accomplished on your way to this point in time; you're going to accomplish just as many, if not more, great things after you leave here.  And whatever psychological impact grades have, it's already come too late - it can't undo who you are, what you've done, or what you can do in the future.