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TheCurve 3 - 07 May 2023 - Main.GillianHo
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Thinking on the curve | | | On a personal level, I've been trying to combat this feeling by focusing on what law school ideeally might focus on. I really have learned so much over the past nine months; it's unreal to think of how far we've all come since starting our first classes. Concepts that at once felt impossible to understand are now in my lexicon - maybe with some uncertainty - but it's something, and it wasn't there before. I don't just mean the cases and the facts and the little flowcharts that explain what is and isn't a defeasible fee; in fact, I'm not referring to those things at all.
If anything, I mean skills it sometimes feels like we picked up by accident. I'm talking about the training in understanding the real-world consequences and the human impacts of the lofty academic theories; the nights staring at the "facts" in the criminal law textbook and knowing that, for all we know, the truth is far from what became crystallized in the law; the Googling "Kelo New London aftermath" and learning about the terrible consequences of what the doctrine often sanitizes. This may not have been its intended effect, but law school has kept me in practice to tuning in to questioning the way things are. This is what I find some solace in, as we slog through another finals season - and I hope that we can all find some comfort in the amount we've grown.
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Nicole — I've been having the same thoughts too. This year, I have constantly questioned myself and wondered what had happened to the intellectual curiosity that I had for my undergraduate studies, where I would actively think about real-world consequences and try to make connections about what I was reading, even if it were a text from over 2,000 years ago, to the institutions and structures around me. The emphasis on the curve has occupied so much of my mental space where the curiosity of my brain has been hardwired to only think in terms of rubrics and what comments could get me points on the final. Your post reminds me of Eben's last words to us about being creative in law school and our career — the school and Big Law's continuous promotion of the curve has actively discouraged creativity, and I can see it in my own approach to my studies. There is a cruel irony in how law school draws so many academically fascinated and thoughtful individuals, yet is structured in a manner which does not reward thoughtfulness. With this realization, I'm hoping that we can carve out our own paths away from the traditional pressures and structures of law school and find space to exercise the creativity which we entered law school with. - Gillian
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