The Dirt Field

[Every year, a first year student at Mason Law writes a column in The Docket, the school’s biweekly newspaper, about their throughts, feelings, and experiences as a first year student. This year, that student writer is me.]

I went to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. For those of you who have not heard of that school, I can encapsulate the entire spirit of the school in one small example: our mascot was a TI-82 Plus graphing calculator. Enough said.

In middle school, I had been a straight-A student who suffered an emotional collapse at the end of the second quarter of eighth grade when Mrs. Isaacs, my geometry teacher, gave me a B+ (not that I’m still bitter or anything). When I got to high school, however, my grades plummeted, my interest in academics waned, and I spent the majority of my time having fun and getting into trouble. If asked to name a cause for my decline in performance, I would have to blame it on everybody around me. The kids in my classes were so motivated – when the teacher asked if anybody had the answer, everybody raised their hands immediately. Everybody wanted to join clubs and be involved and run for president of the damn universe. So what did I do? I filled the niche of “Most Likely To Break The Law” and “Biggest Slacker”. My parents were so proud.

I’m getting the sense that law school will be very similar. My classes are filled with hand-raisers and answer-knowers, people who are intent on not only doing the reading but BY GOD, DOING NEXT THURSDAY’S READING AS WELL. These are the people who love footnotes and references to other sources, because it means they will have a chance to LEARN MORE! AND KNOW MORE! AND ANSWER BETTER IN CLASS! I’m exhausted just thinking about all of the work they are doing, so exhausted that I can’t be bothered to do my own.

It’s not just in class either. The online discussions are rife with these answer-knowers who spend every waking minute discussing everything legal under the sun. (“But I DON’T think he showed intent. And this Supreme Court case I read over the summer discusses this exact situation…”) I can imagine these people sitting at home in front of their computers hitting the refresh button over and over until a new post appears on the class website, and then furiously banging out an erudite response. I can feel their urgency and their desperate desire to reach through their computer screens and strangle every other answer-knower who dares to post a response first. It must be difficult to claw your way to the top when so many other people are climbing the same cliff.

So what are the ordinary people like me to do? Even if I gave studying my all, even if I started eating pages of my Torts textbook and sleeping on a pillow made of Contracts cases, I don’t think I’d ever be able to compete with these academic Olympians. I’d still be a testament to mediocrity. Without the desire to eat my peers alive and commune with the law during every waking minute, I’m relegated to stepping off my high horse and returning to scholastic indifference. After all, somebody has to be #501 out of 501 in the class rank. Somebody has to grow up to chase ambulances.

I know this sounds like I’m already giving up, but let me assure you I’m not. My plan – and I hope this resonates with other people out there in my position – is to get through law school with both an education and a life. Sure, I’ll study and of course I’ll still use my multicolored highlighters like they’re smack and I’m a junkie, but I refuse to surrender my spare time entirely. If I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, being ahead in my reading would bring me substantially less satisfaction in my last moments of life than say, recalling how I spent my last weekend watching reruns of Grey’s Anatomy and befriending strangers on Facebook (unless I lived through the experience and was able to nail the busdriver for committing a tort). For those of you who are not born answer-knowers, take my advice: go forth, study hard, enjoy life, and don’t let the textbooks get you down.