Playing by the rules...

Today I visited a professor to review an exam from last semester. I made the appointment out of sick curiosity, I suppose. Spring semester was odd for me. I felt like I knew the material back and forth. I didn’t feel stressed in the weeks before exams. I didn’t stress during the exams. I answered the questions as if I were on autopilot.

Then the grades came in. I scored just above average. I was mildly devastated. My ranking fell. I was bumped out of the percentage eligible for on-campus interviewing. I missed being able to take part in the Law Review’s write-on competition by .02 of a point in my GPA. I knew I wasn’t dumb, but I was still deflated. What was I doing wrong?


When I left for Paris this summer I was still in my funk. I enjoyed my summer classes, but I didn’t put any effort into them. I mean, why bother? I was going to do badly anyway. Why waste a good time in Paris studying? Why not help out the kids who really cared as far as the curve was concerned? In my first final in Paris I wrote four pages in my bluebook, not because I didn’t know the material despite my best efforts, but because I had lost all confidence and completely froze. Two of those pages consisted of a personal apology to my professor. I wrote that I attended his class regularly, enjoyed it greatly, and to please not consider my performance to be indicative of his teaching ability.

This semester has been a pretty half-hearted experience thus far. I have lapsed into a state of apathy. Even my writing is boring. I start most of my sentences with ‘I’ and I don’t even bother to avoid the passive tense. The interviewing panel from the BigLaw firms didn’t exactly spur me on either.

So I met with my prof who had pulled my exam earlier and looked it over. (I got a flat B on the exam – solidly average.)

“Oh Ana,” she sighed as I sat down. “First off, let me tell you that you are very intelligent.”

Uh, okay, sure, whatever.

“You did really well on the multiple choice section,” she continued, “one of the better scores.”

Great.

“You argued the issues very effectively. I’m convinced that you understand the material and know it well.”

Too bad half the class apparently did a better job.

She looked over the exam. “And your writing,” she added, “your writing is just…really great.”

Lot of good it did me.

“The only thing separating you from the people who got the A,” she said skipping over B+ and A-, “Ana, you didn’t write down the rule on your issues.”

Are you kidding me? I didn’t write down the rule! On an essay exam, the answer is made up of four parts: the issue, the rule, and the arguments for and against. Some people miss the issue. Most people don’t go into enough depth on the argument. The rule is the definition, the gimme. Everyone knows the rules by exam time. It’s like the 400 points you get just for filling in the bubbles of your name on the SAT scan-tron. The rule also comprises about 25% of the points on an issue.

I looked over the prof’s grading sheet. She’d outlined each of the issues and assigned them a point value. For additional ideas and issues, she’d allotted five points…I’d received ten.

I was oddly relieved. I wasn’t stupid. I did know the material better than most. I was just a complete flake.

“Ohhh,” I moaned. “There’s three-tenths of a point separating me from the top of the class.”

“You can probably make that up by next semester,” she said.

“But this was the semester that counted!” I said as I beat my head on her desk. “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m going through a small crisis of faith right now, and questioning whether or not I should even practice law.”

“Ana,” she said. “You’ll be fine. You’ll have a great GPA by the time you graduate. You’ll find a job, and trust me, you know your stuff. I predict that headhunters will start calling you after only a year of practice.”

Didn’t write the rule…that’s hilarious. What is it with me and rules?