T6 student with V5 SA lined up... Why should I care? Forum

[boredstudent]

Seriously... Why should I care about how I do in school this year (2L)? I don't take any particular pride in getting good grades, the firm I'm summering at has a near 100% offer rate, and it's nearly impossible to fail. Hell, it's even hard to get C's. I'm going to bust my ass during the summer, and do everything humanly possible to leave at the end with an offer. This is one of the last periods of time I'll have the freedom to not stress out every day... but yet I feel like I should care. So with that I ask, how in the hell does someone in my shoes motivate themselves to care? I've been mailing it in the whole year, getting median or slightly below median, and would like a valid excuse not to.

Sorry in advance for sounding like a whiny bitch, I realize a ton of people would like to be similarly situated. I'm just looking for advice on how to not feel so useless right now.

[ph14]

Seriously... Why should I care about how I do in school this year (2L)? I don't take any particular pride in getting good grades, the firm I'm summering at has a near 100% offer rate, and it's nearly impossible to fail. Hell, it's even hard to get C's. I'm going to bust my ass during the summer, and do everything humanly possible to leave at the end with an offer. This is one of the last periods of time I'll have the freedom to not stress out every day... but yet I feel like I should care. So with that I ask, how in the hell does someone in my shoes motivate themselves to care? I've been mailing it in the whole year, getting median or slightly below median, and would like a valid excuse not to.

Sorry in advance for sounding like a whiny bitch, I realize a ton of people would like to be similarly situated. I'm just looking for advice on how to not feel so useless right now.

So don't. It literally doesn't affect anyone but you, so do whatever you want.

[thesealocust]

You shouldn't care.

Find a hobby, travel, and drink a lot.

[boredstudent]

You shouldn't care.

Find a hobby, travel, and drink a lot.

The hobby part has proved the hardest. Traveling and drinking is all I've done during 2L. It just feels weird not to have the pressure to achieve something--anything--for the first time in, seemingly, ever. It's not a bad life, but I just feel bad not caring about getting a C here and there. I've never turned in trash work in my life because it always seemed to have consequences.

[Gorki]

I guess if your looking for us to push you then just the fact that if you do jack shit for 9~10 months straight it may be hard to adjust to actually doing quality work in tight deadlines during SA? I know that sounds lame, but I dunno what else to tell you. Enjoy the good life.

[ph14]

I guess if your looking for us to push you then just the fact that if you do jack shit for 9~10 months straight it may be hard to adjust to actually doing quality work in tight deadlines during SA? I know that sounds lame, but I dunno what else to tell you. Enjoy the good life.

[aces]

I'm in a similar situation and have had similar motivation issues. Here's what I've come up with:

-Grades will probably matter at least a little in lateral hiring, especially if you lateral less than 3 or 4 years out. The V5 might be great about offer rates, but there is quite a lot of voluntary/involuntary attrition. You don't want to unnecessarily close any doors.

-Getting median grades makes getting a competitive clerkship essentially impossible. If you want to do transactional work, ignore this, but if you're going into litigation, clerking (and remember, clerking after a year or two of practice is en vogue these days) does wonders for your career in a bunch of different ways.

-The economy could tank again, especially if the debt ceiling shenanigans don't get sorted out. Your firm may have been historically 100% offer rates, but that could change in a heartbeat, and you don't want to give your firm any excuse to no-offer/defer/etc.

-As suggested above, it's hard to go from not-give-a-fuck to do-everything-humanly-possible. Granted, this only means that you should buckle down a little when spring finals roll around to get back in the game, but you need to put yourself in a position where you can do that and still be competitive grades-wise.

That said, you obviously don't need to go back to 1L levels. You can get away with doing very little reading on time, but you should probably at least go to class most of the time and cram a few weeks before finals. You could also pick up a part-time job (get paid and adds extra lines to the resume) if class isn't motivating you but you don't want to feel like a useless bag of crap.

[manofjustice]

How hard will it be for you to care and get decent grades? Like, it's just what you should do. Life ain't a game.

[boredstudent]

How hard will it be for you to care and get decent grades? Like, it's just what you should do. Life ain't a game.

Pretty hard. Law school does not come all that natural or easy to me. It certainly isn't "fun" as I've heard some of my classmates describe it.

[Blessedassurance]

Life ain't a game.

orly?

[manofjustice]

How hard will it be for you to care and get decent grades? Like, it's just what you should do. Life ain't a game.

Pretty hard. Law school does not come all that natural or easy to me. It certainly isn't "fun" as I've heard some of my classmates describe it.

Interesting. So how'd you grab an SA at a V5?

[ph14]

How hard will it be for you to care and get decent grades? Like, it's just what you should do. Life ain't a game.

Pretty hard. Law school does not come all that natural or easy to me. It certainly isn't "fun" as I've heard some of my classmates describe it.

Interesting. So how'd you grab an SA at a V5?

I hope you are trolling.

[Gorki]

How hard will it be for you to care and get decent grades? Like, it's just what you should do. Life ain't a game.

Pretty hard. Law school does not come all that natural or easy to me. It certainly isn't "fun" as I've heard some of my classmates describe it.

Interesting. So how'd you grab an SA at a V5?

T6 and working hard for good 1L grades I assume. A lot of lawyers hate the fuck out of LS but just hacked through it as much as necessary... But more to the point.... T6.

[Blessedassurance]

do people really enjoy law school? sometimes i think i'm the only one who hates it since since everybody else keeps telling me how great it is

[rad lulz]

Maybe you're that one dude who gets no offered

[skw]

do people really enjoy law school? sometimes i think i'm the only one who hates it since since everybody else keeps telling me how great it is

I think it depends to some degree on your experiences prior to LS, how much debt you're looking at, and what your job prospects are like. Having worked for 12 years before LS I honestly enjoy it. To me it is a break from the real world, a chance to learn something new, and although there is a lot of work, for me it is not nearly as stressful as my career. Having no debt and a good shot at a permanent position with my SA firm also add to my enjoyment of the experience. If I were looking at $100k or more of debt and unsure about a job, I'm certain LS would be less enjoyable for me.

[AC Vegas]

You shouldn't. You should care more about creating good habits - eat right, exercise, get up early - while you have the time now because getting that shit started is hard once you start working.

Either that, or just go to the bar a lot.

[KidStuddi]

Similar situation to OP. I just to try and rationalize being lazy into something good.

My theory: Self discipline is a finite resource and so I'm just saving mine up for the summer. It's like how diets with "cheat days" work better than those that just say never eat anything unhealthy ever again. This is my cheat semester so that I'm not burned out come summer time.

[MinEMorris]

I think Aces summed up all of the reasons that you might consider caring. The only one I might add is that having honors/order of the coif always looks nice and lasts on the resume for the rest of your life, but I'm guessing you'd have to gun it up to the extreme to get there at this point. Assuming you don't find Aces' reasons compelling, then realistically it's true that you don't have much of a reason to care about grades.

That said, there are a lot of valuable things you could be doing with your time. Like AC Vegas mentioned, now is a really good chance to develop and refine some good habits that will do wonders for you once you're working. Becoming a better cook, waking up early, exercising, becoming more organized in your life (e.g. keeping better track of your finances, start using a planner, etc.), and so on, are all great things that you can do.

In general, I think it's important that you recognize what a golden opportunity having a lax semester/3L year is. I'm assuming you'll graduate around ~26, and then work biglaw for a few years. If so, you're going to be timefucked until you lateral, at which point you'll be ~30. At 30 you'll probably start looking to establish a "true" life (e.g. get married, buy a house, start considering kids). Once you have stuff like a spouse and kids in addition to your job, you're pretty much just busy until retirement.
One way to interpret that is that you should party hard, but honestly I think even when you're busy it's pretty easy to find a night to get shitfaced, so that's something you can always do later. Instead, I would probably concentrate on making meaningful advances. Do something like spend more time with your family (not to be dark, but seriously, shit happens, family members can die at very unexpected times, and when it happens with a sibling or parent it's hard to wonder why you didn't take opportunities to catch up with them and get to know them better), finish learning your second/third/whatever language, or go on a few adventures. Just a thought.

Anyway, congrats on your SA and have fun during 2l/3l.

[boredstudent]

I think Aces summed up all of the reasons that you might consider caring. The only one I might add is that having honors/order of the coif always looks nice and lasts on the resume for the rest of your life, but I'm guessing you'd have to gun it up to the extreme to get there at this point. Assuming you don't find Aces' reasons compelling, then realistically it's true that you don't have much of a reason to care about grades.

That said, there are a lot of valuable things you could be doing with your time. Like AC Vegas mentioned, now is a really good chance to develop and refine some good habits that will do wonders for you once you're working. Becoming a better cook, waking up early, exercising, becoming more organized in your life (e.g. keeping better track of your finances, start using a planner, etc.), and so on, are all great things that you can do.

In general, I think it's important that you recognize what a golden opportunity having a lax semester/3L year is. I'm assuming you'll graduate around ~26, and then work biglaw for a few years. If so, you're going to be timefucked until you lateral, at which point you'll be ~30. At 30 you'll probably start looking to establish a "true" life (e.g. get married, buy a house, start considering kids). Once you have stuff like a spouse and kids in addition to your job, you're pretty much just busy until retirement.
One way to interpret that is that you should party hard, but honestly I think even when you're busy it's pretty easy to find a night to get shitfaced, so that's something you can always do later. Instead, I would probably concentrate on making meaningful advances. Do something like spend more time with your family (not to be dark, but seriously, shit happens, family members can die at very unexpected times, and when it happens with a sibling or parent it's hard to wonder why you didn't take opportunities to catch up with them and get to know them better), finish learning your second/third/whatever language, or go on a few adventures. Just a thought.

Anyway, congrats on your SA and have fun during 2l/3l.

Thanks for the great response; someone should hire you as a life coach. This combined with aces' response is exactly what I needed to hear. And yeah, honors is out of the question and clerking is not likely.

[h_jane_w]

You shouldn't care.

Find a hobby, travel, and drink a lot.

The hobby part has proved the hardest. Traveling and drinking is all I've done during 2L. It just feels weird not to have the pressure to achieve something--anything--for the first time in, seemingly, ever. It's not a bad life, but I just feel bad not caring about getting a C here and there. I've never turned in trash work in my life because it always seemed to have consequences.

LOL you remind me so much of myself. It's like they offer you a little time to relax and you just don't know what to do with yourself.

Try reading books you've never had the chance to, like, last year's bestsellers.
If you're not into that, watch the entirety of Mad Men, or any HBO series.
Volunteering for tutoring at a high school.
Get a part time job? Even if it sucks, at least you could make friends outside LS.
Go to college confidential.com and tell baby high schoolers why law school is a terrible idea (this one's always fun), or otherwise give grown up advice. lol.