Really Bad Grades 1st Semester Forum

[Danny Mothers]

My parents said that I made a wise decision because I have to do something I enjoy for a career. They also said a lot of what asfdsf said about law school being a scam.

With this attitude you'll probably just continuously fail at everything you pursue and then blame it on something intrinsic about the pursuit that leads you to lose all interest in trying hard. Passions are not intrinsic. You create them by working hard and succeeding.

[asdfdfdfadfas]

At the end of the day, you have to learn the information in the context of your job whatever job that may be. Sitting around learning archaic theories, taking tests over fake hypothetical puzzle games, and being put into a standard bell curve purposefully so your professor can get tenure to indicate to those people that you are "capable" is simply a waste of time. Especially given now the vast majority of all of that is on the internet.

My point is that this is a really narrow view of education, which is more than learning how to do your job, and overlooks the fact that someone who doesn't know about a subject is not in the best position to decide what they should be learning about it, even if "everything is on the Internet" (which I also don't think is true, at all).

But I'll stop too because it is away from the point.

OP, you need to not assume you can't do something, and instead go out and talk to people and find out how you can do what you need to do (of course the bigger problem is that you didn't think a string of Fs would be an issue that needed to be addressed).

Also I'm not sure what you have a passion for that is going to be congruent with a job that pays you money.

That is an idealized perspective that doesn't take into account costs and the impact government financed loans have on the well being of millions of students.

If I wanted to learn philosophy from scratch what is stopping me from walking into Harvard's book store tomorrow and writing down all the books covered in the syllabuses of every single class? I'd be debt free, spend probably about a year instead of four doing it, and I'd have a better understanding of philosophy than your average Philosophy major because I could focus on what I believe is important.

So really, from a pure Economics standpoint, the tuition you are paying is going to educators, facilities, overhead, and grandiose facilities. Very little of that tuition is going toward enriching the academic experience of the student.

Of course schools know this. That is why they are all for the government financed student loan program. Of course the government is fine with this as well because now they get those lovely interest payments and steal your future productive capacity under the guise of helping students pay for education!

PM me if you want, I love this debate. I find all of this very interesting.

[Troubled1L]

I decided to not inquire about the grades and ended up getting really strange grades for my final semester.

Four of my professors gave "GNR"s (Grade Not Reported) and my LRW professor gave me a D (it really puts a damper on my transcript). I'm just glad there are four GNRs to the one actual letter grade because if it raises an eyebrow when I'm applying to master's programs this fall, I can explain it and show that the one professor errantly gave me that grade not realizing I had withdrawn.

My parents are a little disappointed and wish I'd given law school a much more serious effort, but I just couldn't bring myself to take in an interest in it. Maybe I messed up and just had the wrong mindset from day one. I'm not sure.

[JGMotorsport]

Well that's too bad. In my first semester my grades were just enough to get me a 3.0 placing me at the top of the bottoms 35%, I got a C+ a P and 2 B+'s. I was pretty close to dropping out looking at that C+ but my second semester went 3 A-'s and 2 B+'s pulling me into the top 45% and qualifying me for the majority of OCI job cut offs. I've always anticipated small law, my market is dominated in small 5-25 member law firms.

No determination, no specific methods. I used CALI a lot more and broke down law into numbered factors on tests and professors loved it.

Law school isn't for everybody. And my working experience shows me that. For one, when you practice in state courts without a lot of case law coverage of issues, it's really hard to put together anything comprehensive. Law school never showed me how to get around that problem. All of my writing assignment have been in Federal courts with ample case law. Almost every memo I've put together at work has been a series of inferential steps and comparisons to other jurisdictions because we don't have anything on point.

Maybe some classes could assign us legal questions in jurisdictions and make us answer them when they lack coverage. That would've been immensely helpful.

[A. Nony Mouse]

I decided to not inquire about the grades and ended up getting really strange grades for my final semester.

Four of my professors gave "GNR"s (Grade Not Reported) and my LRW professor gave me a D (it really puts a damper on my transcript). I'm just glad there are four GNRs to the one actual letter grade because if it raises an eyebrow when I'm applying to master's programs this fall, I can explain it and show that the one professor errantly gave me that grade not realizing I had withdrawn.

My parents are a little disappointed and wish I'd given law school a much more serious effort, but I just couldn't bring myself to take in an interest in it. Maybe I messed up and just had the wrong mindset from day one. I'm not sure.

I think that's pretty obvious, right? Along with the fact that you weren't even willing to talk to the school to tell them you were withdrawing and address the issue of what grades would show up. It's your funeral but if you're thinking about more graduate education you need to understand what went wrong here and figure out how not to have it happen again.

[ronanOgara]

I decided to not inquire about the grades and ended up getting really strange grades for my final semester.

Four of my professors gave "GNR"s (Grade Not Reported) and my LRW professor gave me a D (it really puts a damper on my transcript). I'm just glad there are four GNRs to the one actual letter grade because if it raises an eyebrow when I'm applying to master's programs this fall, I can explain it and show that the one professor errantly gave me that grade not realizing I had withdrawn.

My parents are a little disappointed and wish I'd given law school a much more serious effort, but I just couldn't bring myself to take in an interest in it. Maybe I messed up and just had the wrong mindset from day one. I'm not sure.

Listen, I don't want to shit all over your dreams or life goals, but it really sounds like you need to get some work experience and mature. Screw grad school for the time being and get some real world experience.