I admit that grades are an extremely limited measure of how well I know the law, and an even worse predicter of the likelihood of me succeeding as an attorney. Still, no matter how much I told myself to expect at best mediocre grades on my first semester exams, I was pretty frantic by the time I actually got the envelope in my hands.
We took the exams in mid December, and the grades were mailed out yesterday. That is about 6 weeks, and a long time to wait for midterms. I purposely waited until after class tonight to pick them up, and then I was so nervous I knew I was giving it too much weight but still I stopped on the way home and tore the envelope open! I would probably have looked while standing in the post office but I found a homeless man sleeping under the table when I walked in. Since it was 9:15 at night and there was no one else around, I decided to read the news in the car. I think probably I startled him more than he startled me though.
I am relieved, excited and definitely feeling more confident now. I think I explained before that the exams in law school seem to be more about how well you can write and how fast you can type as much as how well you know the law, and so I was not sure whether I had managed to write anything intelligible or not. Apparently it was enough.
And so for the moment, I feel successful and more prepared to face the coming semesters. No doubt I'll be humbled shortly, and that's as it should be. I know only that I know so very little, and yet this I know for sure. I feel more alive and energized than I have in a long time. Law school has reawakened a hunger for knowledge and truth that has been at least somewhat dormant for a while. That is success in my eyes.
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