Don't fall victim to the A-grade rat race

By: Rob Brown

A s future lawyers, most of us are, in varying degrees, “Type A” personalities: the go-getter, ambitious types if you will. It is not surprising then that most young, bright-eyed, and bushy-tailed, first-year law students are confident in the fact that they each believe they have what it takes to be “top of the class.” But this feeling is not just an artifice for mere vanity's sake. It is imbued upon us as almost imperative that we make those “A”s if we wish to land our dream job and go on to seek our lives of great fortune and fame.

Those dreams, however, are quickly dismissed when first semester grades come in.

It is an emotionally charged experience, and many noble law students have fallen victim to crying, bouts of severe depression, and a cynical attitude that could fester for years to come. This disappointment does not end here.

We all confidently reassure ourselves: “Well … it was my first semester learning a whole new type of material, now I got it and will get my A's next semester.” For a few, they may succeed, but still many of us, although we put even more work and more focus in our studies, still finish first year without one single “A”.

Crazy thoughts run through our heads, such as: “do I not have what it takes?” and “are those select few some sort of prodigal children with superhuman powers, the likes of which, the rest of us will never experience?”

Where the professors may be frustrated with the lack of engagement, so too are the students frustrated with putting hours and hours of study time into their classes and not seeing the results. Students are putting in more effort than they ever have before in their academic careers, only to come out with a “C” and sadly sometimes worse than that.

As students we ask: “What's the point? I can put in half the work and still land that same letter grade, whereas the select few who were blessed with the great fortune of figuring out the test-taking methodology keep getting richer and richer.”

I personally take great issue with grade “normalization”, which is a complicated set of algebraic formula's which would make even a mathematics Ph. D. cringe.

What does “normalizing” mean?

That it's abnormal for a professor to consider most of his students deserving of an “A” grade? What's wrong with that? Doesn't that just show that maybe that professor did a good job and that those professors who feel compelled to give “F” grades are not doing a good job?

I'm not saying that we should all just get “A”s down the list. What I am saying is that if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, call it a duck!

I've come to an epiphany. The constant quest to seek those most coveted “A” grades results in the type of attitude and environment for which lawyers get a bad rap. It enforces in us resentment toward our more successful classmates and teachers and a “win at all costs” attitude, no matter what means it takes to get there.

We have all seen it before: students skirting the rules, pretending you have some learning disability to get extra time to take the exam, becoming a professor's sycophant in hopes your charming personality will boost your grade up, getting an outline from an upperclassmen who got an “A”.

I've come to the conclusion that I just won't let that take control of me. I know what I know, and I am confident that there is no difference between me and “them” and, for that matter, there is no difference between me, as an FIU student, or a Harvard summa cum laude. I actually like to learn the material for learning's sake and, though it may be discouraging if I don't get the grade I feel I should have gotten, I won't let a grade become my scarlet letter. We can't control the outcome of those intense, stress-filled three hours, but we can control the way we approach our lives.

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