Grades.

[elwen]

We got our grades today.

Last semester, everyone told me, "Grades are unpredictable because they depend on how you do relative to everyone else, not how well you do on some absolute scale. Don't try to game the system. What you think is your worst class probably won't be your worst grade."

And I scoffed, "Well, of course it won't be completely predictable, but surely you can have some sense of how well you did after the exam. I'm pretty sure I know where I did better or worse."

Well, now I believe them.

I expected my grades to be like this:
Criminal Law < Torts < Contracts < Civil Procedure

I felt pretty good about civ pro. Torts and contracts were kind of neutral, and I was pretty sure I did horrible in crim. I think it was mainly because it was the first final, and I wasn't quite sure what I was doing yet. And he had 5 short questions instead of the 2 or 3 longer ones in my other classes. And, it just felt like this year's questions were harder than any of the old exams I'd practiced on. *shrug* Anyway, I did relatively fine in all my classes, so I'm not going to dwell on it too much. Of course I will regret and think, 'I was this close to 3King that class!' even though it was second on my list, after torts. 'I should have followed the "3K your first exam to ease yourself into the ordeal" strategy!' Things like that. But yeah. That's just me and never being satisfied. As it is, I did better than I thought I would, so.

But anyways, my actual grades came out like this:
Criminal Law < Civil Procedure < Contracts < Torts

Man am I glad I didn't 3K torts. o_O I'm not sure how to react to getting my best grade in a class I never finished studying for. In fact, one of the questions was on something I hadn't studied, just printed out my class notes for. -_-;; Just goes to show how true people's advice was, I guess.

Now, I don't know what the grade distributions were in each class, so maybe what I got in civ pro is still relatively high or something. I didn't pay attention to who were "clumpers" or "spreaders", so I have no clue. I guess I just have to wait until they post model answers and hopefully grade distributions, too.

But I really shouldn't be obsessing. Yeah right. I've been telling myself that since frosh year at Tech.

Comments

[snoflakes.livejournal.com]

Grades are silly things. I remember at tech multiple instances of things like that. A final I knew I was not prepared for and did horribly on, but then did fine compared to the mean and everyone else. And others where I knew I did absolutely horribly and everyone said they were sure I did fine, and I really did as horribly as I thought. That's just what happens when it's all relative.

But congrats on getting one semester done! I'm not sure how much grades are important for law school, I've heard they need to be good in order to get into law review, but do they really matter other than that?

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

I don't think grades are that important for Stanford Law Review. It's mostly a really long candidate exercise that people say extends your semester by a week (i.e. you have to spend a week after finals working on it). *shudder*

Probably the biggest thing where grades matter is clerking for a judge, which I definitely want to do. Stanford students can probably get clerkships even if their grades are not so good, but it obviously affects the range of options. I think it's generally assumed that you need at least a 4.0 (or maybe higher?) to clerk for a Supreme Court Justice. Fortunately, I don't aspire that high, but federal circuit judge clerkships are pretty prestigious, too.

[ling84.livejournal.com]

I was pretty surprised when I got my first set of grad school EE grades, but ah well. At the point where I am right now, I've decided that even if I don't get perfect grades, so what? I mean, I'm already up here in the highest stratosphere, and there's absolutely no shame to losing to some of the world's best minds. :)