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Thanks Mom

I have 3 classes this semester with a pretty good friend. We've had a few classes together before so this particular friend knows my general routine for law school, which is show up to class, never do the reading, don't stress about not having done the reading all semester, and teach myself the subject towards the end of the semester in the madness of the finals crunch.

The reason I now have this approach to law school is because I've tried it the "correct" way and it just didn't make a difference in my grades, so why put in the effort?? My first year of law school I worked my ass off, literally. I did all the reading, did tons of practice questions, diligently outlined every course, and still ended up with okay, but not great grades. When second year hit and my schedule was jam packed with clinic work and being on two journals my coursework went by the wayside. I didn't do any of the reading for any of my classes and at the end of the semester I actually had better grades than most of my first year grades. From there on out I have taken the approach that law school is just one giant tossup, and for most of us around the middle of the curve it is a total guess on any given day as to how things will turn out on those dreaded exams, so while we're here we might as well have a little bit (or TON) of fun (i.e. beer, movie nights, pizza, and plenty of sleep).

So I was surprised yesterday when my friend gave me the look of disapproval and stopped just short of lecturing me for not doing my reading yesterday. We have a class on legal analysis, which is esentially a semester long bar review course that teaches the general analaysis skills tested on the writing portions of most bar exams. The book for the class has to be ordered direct from the publisher and we didn't get the information about the book until the first class last night. I logged right on to the publisher's site and ordered the book. The professor has 20 pages from the book listed as homework on the syllabus for tomorrow's class so there are a few copies of the book on hold in the library that we can use until our books arrive. My friend told me that she was going up right after class to do the reading and asked me if I wanted to come with her. I told her I ordered the book and would just catch up on it when it arrives next week. That's when the look of shock and total disapproval spread across her face and I got the short "talk" about how we have homework due tomorrow (and the tone was nothing short of the tone that I would expect a parent to use in lecturing a small child about the importance of looking both ways before you cross a street).

Ummmmm thanks MOM!

Seriously, I've always wondered why some students, some who are your friends and some who aren't, feel the need to monitor what everyone else is doing and pass along their judgment/opinion when they don't approve? We're all adults and most of us are about to graduate law school in 4 months, something tells me if we're all still in law school we've been doing something right or else we would have flunked out 4 semesters ago. Why can't we all just be responsible for ourselves?

Full post as published by [ Useless Dicta ] on January 14, 2009 (boomark / email).