Re: ITT (post-pg 4) we discuss OperaSoprano's awesomeness
Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:45 pm
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Dude she's like 8 feet tall.fonzerelli wrote:Without having to read the entire modified thread, can someone summarize for me why OperaS is awesome in a quick sentence?
Wow, amazon soprano. Is this self-tar verified? I'm not being skeptical, just motioning for evidence.thesealocust wrote:Dude she's like 8 feet tall.fonzerelli wrote:Without having to read the entire modified thread, can someone summarize for me why OperaS is awesome in a quick sentence?
She is one of the most positive posters in history.fonzerelli wrote:Without having to read the entire modified thread, can someone summarize for me why OperaS is awesome in a quick sentence?
8 feet tall? Put down the magic mushrooms, mon ami. I'm 5'7".thesealocust wrote:Dude she's like 8 feet tall.fonzerelli wrote:Without having to read the entire modified thread, can someone summarize for me why OperaS is awesome in a quick sentence?
This is super true. Under roughly 30 students you shouldn't expect a normal distribution, so when the curve is applied to courses like that it's madness.OperaSoprano wrote:What's worse is the mandated curve for our 16 person LRW class. It's just too small a sample for the curve to be natural and organic.
Class shopping can be solved by HP/P/F with a tight cap on HP.thesealocust wrote:This is super true. Under roughly 30 students you shouldn't expect a normal distribution, so when the curve is applied to courses like that it's madness.OperaSoprano wrote:What's worse is the mandated curve for our 16 person LRW class. It's just too small a sample for the curve to be natural and organic.
That being said, if you have no curve for those classes it encourages [strike]forum[/strike] class shopping, which is also bad. The moral of the story is all small seminars should be P/F, or evaluated with grades/remarks that aren't included in GPA.
Nah, my classmates know the score by now. I'm better known for my in class antics, actually; I'm favored to be the most consistently freaked out person in my LRW section. Because I never hid my identity, there was never any drive to betray my secret. I don't think I've ever given my classmates reasons to dislike me, and in truth, many of them don't even know what TLS is. Shocking, right?cubswin wrote:OS, you are pretty awesome.
Perhaps you've discussed this elswhere, but do you get any grief about being a TLS mod (or having 7000 posts) from your fellow Fordham students? It seems like it'd be easy for your classmates to identify you (a pretty distinct story with the fashion major, a self-tar, even if its only about 10 pixels big), and that TLS might not have the greatest reputation with non-TLS law students.
This stuff, right here.prezidentv8 wrote:Class shopping can be solved by HP/P/F with a tight cap on HP.thesealocust wrote:This is super true. Under roughly 30 students you shouldn't expect a normal distribution, so when the curve is applied to courses like that it's madness.OperaSoprano wrote:What's worse is the mandated curve for our 16 person LRW class. It's just too small a sample for the curve to be natural and organic.
That being said, if you have no curve for those classes it encourages [strike]forum[/strike] class shopping, which is also bad. The moral of the story is all small seminars should be P/F, or evaluated with grades/remarks that aren't included in GPA.
The argument about classes theoretically having normal curves anyway (and from what I've seen, the forced curves tend not to be normal) presupposes that variance is irrelevant.
Additionally, the distribution invariably will not be normal, in reality, in a fair proportion of classes.
Name change suggestion: AwesomeSopranoOperaSoprano wrote:Nah, my classmates know the score by now. I'm better known for my in class antics, actually; I'm favored to be the most consistently freaked out person in my LRW section. Because I never hid my identity, there was never any drive to betray my secret. I don't think I've ever given my classmates reasons to dislike me, and in truth, many of them don't even know what TLS is. Shocking, right?cubswin wrote:OS, you are pretty awesome.
Perhaps you've discussed this elswhere, but do you get any grief about being a TLS mod (or having 7000 posts) from your fellow Fordham students? It seems like it'd be easy for your classmates to identify you (a pretty distinct story with the fashion major, a self-tar, even if its only about 10 pixels big), and that TLS might not have the greatest reputation with non-TLS law students.
Being on here has been a gigantic net positive for me. I came to Fordham already knowing everyone here who had used the boards, and in my first week people actually sought me out to talk about the admissions process. It was really touching and sweet. Of course I also got to meet people around the country, and now have friends at more than a dozen law schools, from my nearest neighbors to far flung places like UVA, Chicago and Berkeley. If I ever found myself in trouble, I know I would never lack for advice or help. The people of TLS guided me and helped me study, and I was able to bring their advice to my own classmates. I owe them a tremendous debt. It is highly unlikely I would even be at Fordham if not for TLS.
It's probably because I'm also a TLS user, but as a Fordham student, I would never give OS any grief for being a mod. In fact, I took it as a testament to her commitment and willingness to help anyone on the board, and she/her positive spirit has been nothing less than encouragement for me.fonzerelli wrote:Name change suggestion: AwesomeSopranoOperaSoprano wrote:Nah, my classmates know the score by now. I'm better known for my in class antics, actually; I'm favored to be the most consistently freaked out person in my LRW section. Because I never hid my identity, there was never any drive to betray my secret. I don't think I've ever given my classmates reasons to dislike me, and in truth, many of them don't even know what TLS is. Shocking, right?cubswin wrote:OS, you are pretty awesome.
Perhaps you've discussed this elswhere, but do you get any grief about being a TLS mod (or having 7000 posts) from your fellow Fordham students? It seems like it'd be easy for your classmates to identify you (a pretty distinct story with the fashion major, a self-tar, even if its only about 10 pixels big), and that TLS might not have the greatest reputation with non-TLS law students.
Being on here has been a gigantic net positive for me. I came to Fordham already knowing everyone here who had used the boards, and in my first week people actually sought me out to talk about the admissions process. It was really touching and sweet. Of course I also got to meet people around the country, and now have friends at more than a dozen law schools, from my nearest neighbors to far flung places like UVA, Chicago and Berkeley. If I ever found myself in trouble, I know I would never lack for advice or help. The people of TLS guided me and helped me study, and I was able to bring their advice to my own classmates. I owe them a tremendous debt. It is highly unlikely I would even be at Fordham if not for TLS.
You are really sweet. Thank you.frost wrote:It's probably because I'm also a TLS user, but as a Fordham student, I would never give OS any grief for being a mod. In fact, I took it as a testament to her commitment and willingness to help anyone on the board, and she/her positive spirit has been nothing less than encouragement for me.fonzerelli wrote:Name change suggestion: AwesomeSopranoOperaSoprano wrote:Nah, my classmates know the score by now. I'm better known for my in class antics, actually; I'm favored to be the most consistently freaked out person in my LRW section. Because I never hid my identity, there was never any drive to betray my secret. I don't think I've ever given my classmates reasons to dislike me, and in truth, many of them don't even know what TLS is. Shocking, right?cubswin wrote:OS, you are pretty awesome.
Perhaps you've discussed this elswhere, but do you get any grief about being a TLS mod (or having 7000 posts) from your fellow Fordham students? It seems like it'd be easy for your classmates to identify you (a pretty distinct story with the fashion major, a self-tar, even if its only about 10 pixels big), and that TLS might not have the greatest reputation with non-TLS law students.
Being on here has been a gigantic net positive for me. I came to Fordham already knowing everyone here who had used the boards, and in my first week people actually sought me out to talk about the admissions process. It was really touching and sweet. Of course I also got to meet people around the country, and now have friends at more than a dozen law schools, from my nearest neighbors to far flung places like UVA, Chicago and Berkeley. If I ever found myself in trouble, I know I would never lack for advice or help. The people of TLS guided me and helped me study, and I was able to bring their advice to my own classmates. I owe them a tremendous debt. It is highly unlikely I would even be at Fordham if not for TLS.
+100 for OS's awesomeness
First, you guys all have to stop with this. It's embarrassing!mistergoft wrote:While I concur with OS and company in regards to the notion of reducing the amount of options available to professors to HP/P/F in the sense that it would reduce stress, I don't think that implementing such a strategy is plausible or practical.
Employers need a metric of distinguishing between candidates; while it may be feasible to abrogate grades at the finest legal institutions in the country, who attract the brightest and most talented aspiring attorneys, implementing such a measure at other schools would prove problematic for employers. It is clearly possible for someone with an abysmally low undergraduate gpa with a high lsat score - now, I'm not trying to ignite a debate on the correlation between lsat success and intelligence, or to take a crack at splitters, who can clearly have much success in LS (Jazzone comes to mind), but performing well in the lsat is not predictive of competence as a practicing attorney. Grades, graded on a tight curve that ranks students, are probably the best way an employer can evaluate a potential employee; it is the best tool an employer has to distinguish what candidate can best handle the rigors of a legal career (arguably, obviously). In addition, we live in a capitalist society; competition is, by definition, a integral part of such a society; if we distinguish the impact of grades, employers will find a way to evaluate students on some other basis that will inevitably evoke stress and anxiety in law school students.
While I can see why people complain of the stress that law school delivers, we are going into a career where everything we do will be subject to review by a judge. We're not all going to be litigators, but, ultimately, we're going to be competing against other lawyers to either win a case, or just to do a better job completing a due diligence report. Competition is the driving force of our profession; it is at the very heart of our society and there is no way to avoid it. Capitalists strive to rank, organize, and evaluate; I mean, we do it every day, just in our preferences and tastes. If I chose to go to McDonalds over Burger King tomorrow, granted, it's not going to stress out the upper echelons of corporate management at BK; however, if I were the only consumer, they would be devastated, ripping their hair out, working tirelessly to attempt to attract my business. It's the same with law; not only do employers want to distinguish the best candidates from the masses, but the customers of these businesses are also striving to do the same. Therefore, someone who graduated Summa Cum Laude from Vanderbilt will inevitably attract more business than someone who graduated at median from UF. So, really, grades serve a dual purpose, both attracting business to employers and allowing those employers to evaluate the best candidates. Certainly, the difference between a 3.5 and a 3.7 is a superficial, probably inaccurate indication of how much better of an employee one student will be, or how smart and competent they are; however, I believe that such differences are a consequence of the society that we live in, and they don't really bother me too much.
I think the real way to approach this law school experience is to try to minimize stress; if you're attending a school that you wouldn't feel comfortable graduating at median from, you should probably not be at that school. Granted, I went to my TTT hoping and praying that I would never succumb to such a fate, and thankfully I have not. But I never stressed, at least, not too much; sure, waiting for grades was excruciating and I had dreams about getting straight Cs and dropping out, but at the end of the day I just accepted the inevitability that I would be ranked among my peers and focused on doing the best job that I could, regardless of those around me. And I turned out alright.
I also second the idea that OS is awesome.
Observationalist! Oh, we're both guilty of the same thing. I've missed you. YOU are awesome.observationalist wrote:Well I for one am happy someone finally found a way to put "Vanderbilt" into a post so that I would search and stumble upon this thread so I can cosign the OS = awesome. OS, here's to your first semester down, and to many consecutively less stressful semesters to follow! Same to the rest of you 1L kidos. I feel old.
Thanks OS. Seriously, all this talk about the curve takes me back to when I was a young and skeptical 1L. Not that my skepticism has changed after two more years of riding up and down the curve... I still have yet to hear anyone from any administration adequately explain why in the world legal writing should be anything besides Pass/Fail. Either you can write well enough to impress an employer or you can't... and if you can't, it's the school's job to assess that early on and then make sure you get the extra training to make sure you can.OperaSoprano wrote:Observationalist! Oh, we're both guilty of the same thing. I've missed you. YOU are awesome.observationalist wrote:Well I for one am happy someone finally found a way to put "Vanderbilt" into a post so that I would search and stumble upon this thread so I can cosign the OS = awesome. OS, here's to your first semester down, and to many consecutively less stressful semesters to follow! Same to the rest of you 1L kidos. I feel old.
Keen observation, observationalist.observationalist wrote:Either you can write well enough to impress an employer or you can't... and if you can't, it's the school's job to assess that early on and then make sure you get the extra training to make sure you can.
The biggest difference is that in one situation, you have 3 hours to vomit as much stuff onto a piece of paper after thinking about the situation and in the other, you get to think about it, discuss it with people, research it a little, and then pop out an answer burning the midnight oil.mistergoft wrote:I concur with your sentiments about LRW, Prez; my LRW was graded under the system advocated by OS (i.e. S+, S, F) and I feel that system is appropriate for a class like LRW when grading can be extraordinarily arbitrary.
However, I don't think that exams are quite as arbitrary. They test a student's ability to take a hypothetical legal dilemma and apply the appropriate legal principles to said scenario, ultimately resulting in analyzing that scenario utilizing legal reasoning and predicting an outcome. This is the work lawyers do; maybe not 1st year Biglaw associates, but, ultimately, it's what you're going to be doing in real life. The example from Getting to Maybe comes to mind, when the partner in a firm asks the associate to analyze a situation relating to land use (or something like that, I don't recall exactly what the issue was). Granted, law school grading is ultimately still arbitrary, I concede that point; in addition, I don't warrant that a student that spots one additional issue will necessarily be a better lawyer than another. I do think, though, that the pressure you feel on exams, and the uncertainty, is meant to reflect the type of pressure and uncertainty that an actual practicing lawyer experiences when he or she is litigating a case on a novel issue with confusing, convoluted precedent that could truly be decided either way. While they are not perfect, there are meritorious qualities in the law school examination process, and I don't know if I could deduce a better, more practical way to structure grading.