I laughed when I got my Remedies grade...it was a point below the median. I can pretty much chalk it up to very poor test taking ability, but I deserved a bad grade because I didn't pay attention or read all semester, so whatever.
Then I got my grade in business planning. You know, the class with basically no new material. My fifth class with this professor. The professor whose other classes were a significant boost to my G.P.A. It was a B+ or A- (we have a grading system where you get a number on a 100 point scale, so what letter grade it is depends on the curve). I mean, this is pretty pathetic, I should have gotten a much higher grade. I have a feeling it was my poor job on the take-home midterm (writing a business plan), as that counted for 30% and I felt pretty good about the actual final. I was pretty upset by this, but at the end of the day, it didn't move my overall G.P.A. too much, so I could get over it.
But then I got my last grade for my Bioethics seminar. The median. UGH. I actually thought I would be getting a high A in that class. We got graded for class participation and 10 reaction memos, plus a paper topic proposal, outline and the paper itself. I know I got dinged two points for reaction memos and 1 point for my topic proposal, but that is only 3 out of 100. My paper was awesome. Seriously, I objectively think it was great. Perfect blue-book style footnoting, tons of research, unique proposal. Awesome. So what the fuck?!
Before this semester, I said that I had a job and all I had to do was graduate, so I didn't care that having a baby was going to interfere with school. Turns out, I do kind of care...I'm insecure enough that I sort of need positive reinforcement from grades. I'm embarrassed that I won't graduate higher in my class, especially since I feel like I already have to justify going to a lower ranked school than most people I work with. I'm actually kind of confused as to how I got such low grades. I'm pissed that my last taste of law school will be such a black mark on my transcript. My confidence is totally shaken. And now I'm thinking, if I can't get a good grade in some silly law school class then what if I also can't pass something important, like the Bar exam? Did I take on too much, thinking I could handle life the same way I did before having a baby? What if I'm just not cut out for being a lawyer? Or what if I can't handle working at a big firm, where will I go and how will I pay off loans?
Ok, so maybe I'm being slightly dramatic. In truth, I know I'll be just fine. I know that I will graduate, that the important thing is having my family and a job. But right now I just want to allow myself to wallow in self-pity and think about all the ways in which I screwed up.
I probably won't though. Looking at this face all day will be much more therapeutic.
*update* so I emailed the last two profs, and it turns out the forced median is what screwed me. I lost 2 points in business planning and SEVEN points in bioethics because the classes are graded on a strict curve and the median HAS to be an 83. Le sigh
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