Sua SponteMy law school odyssey: the ongoing narrative.
The draft memo is finally done, to my relief. Now I remember the best part about writing papers: finishing them.
Rushing out to catch the 5:20 train this afternoon, I ran into a nifty 2L in the lobby and, rather against my schedule, got to talking. She is also a classical singer and loves the idea of planning a performance later in the year, which now means I have no excuse for not getting back into practice. But then she started saying depressing things to me: "Don't spend more than six hours a week on El-Dubyar. Okay, ten hours a week. But no more. Here's the secret: everyone gets a B."
Well, that's not exactly true, she specified when pressed for more information. One person per section gets an A. Everyone else gets a B. The sole A is earned by voodoo, by the one person who has magically developed the oh-you'll-figure-it-out-with-practice instinct that the El-Dubyar establishment is proudly refusing to teach us directly.
This made me a bit nauseous.
"Listen," said the 2L, by way of reassurance. "Grades are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."
"Ah, shut up," I said, as kindly as possible. Not going to listen. Plugging my ears. Begone, nasty evil thoughts. La la la la la la la.
I'm just really tired of hearing this. I can't help but imagine that a well-prepared student with decent presence of mind and a cultivated facility for issue-spotting, someone who's gone to all the discussions and picked up on all the professorial buzzwords and nitpicks and causes célčbres, is probably going to do just fine on the exam. If I can make myself into that person, I should therefore inherit this likelihood of doing just fine. Why not?
I missed the 5:20 train but made the 5:55, got home at 7, booted up the laptop and flipped on the stereo -- but this time I didn't bother with the Dvorák. I queued up The Fragile, long overdue, and went to work.
If there's going to be one A, I'm going to do my damnedest to isolate the formula that earns it. I'm going to figure out as much as I can to crack this code, to puncture the myth that law school grades can't be earned.
And now the memo's done, or at least a satisfactory draft thereof. In the midst of my typing-citing frenzy, I overheard a song lyric that was better than Xanax. So simple. I paused for a moment, closed my eyes, and pretended someone was saying it to me:
I won't let you fall apart.
I won't let you fall apart.
I won't let you fall apart.
I won't let you fall apart.