Law Professors, Law Schools

I Didn't Ace All Of My Classes -- Now What?

Don't despair. If you are finding you’ve lost your confidence due to grades, this law professor is here to (try and) help you.

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nervous lawyer

Dear LawProfBlawg,

I feel horrible. I didn’t get “A’s” in all my classes. Worse, I didn’t even get “B’s” in all my classes. I feel like an idiot and a failure. What can I do? Help!

Sincerely,

Lost in Limbo

Dear Limbo,

Don’t despair. A lot of changes happen after the first semester of law school. Some of them are unhealthy. Those who once spoke with a stentorian voice in classes will barely talk, while others who were quiet find their voice due to confidence induced by better grades.  If you are finding you’ve lost your voice due to grades, I’m here to (try and) help you.

The first mistake law students make is thinking that the grades define you.   An “A” doesn’t mean you are a legal genius. A “C” doesn’t make you an idiot. It is a grade, one of many you will receive over the course of your law school career. If it was a fair exam, it tested your “skill” regarding a subject matter. “Skill” is a function of innate intelligence, hard work, and to some degree, your ability to read a professor and the course material. It ALSO could be a function of your being physically ill (did you have a cold?), or a myriad of other events in your life at the time you took the exam. For this reason, a grade only tells you how you did on one particular day at a particular time.

Your lack of an “A” could be a function of many things. You won’t know until you take the important next step of going to each and every professor from whom you have taken an exam and looked over your exam answer, compared it with the model answer, asked questions of your professor, and then worked to improve your answer.

Then, consider what you did to study for the exam. How did you study? What was effective and what wasn’t? Were you distracted? Were you anxious a lot? If you were studying in a study group, did everyone get about the same grade? In other words, look for problems that may have led to the lower grade.

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Most students stop at comparing the model answer to theirs. Some professors refuse to go further than that, too, doing great disservice to their students.

Let’s consider an analogy. Suppose you play golf. Let’s suppose further your score is terrible (well above par), in part because of a systemic problem with your golf swing. You go to the Golf Pro, who compares your swing to an ideal swing. It turns out you’re slicing. You decide that’s it! You look at a perfect golf swing, you see your slice, and then you go back to your next round of 18 holes. The problem? You didn’t CORRECT your slice first. That takes practice, repetition, and diligence.

To sum up: Mistakes are an opportunity for correction, IF you address them. Remember, that quote by Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” applies with equal veracity to law school exams. In order to correct those mistakes, you have to get over the fear about confronting them.

The WORST thing you can do is to ignore your last semester’s performance, pretend it didn’t happen, or pretend it is something you can’t cure. Worse, you could beat yourself up over it by telling yourself it is due to your non-correctable idiocy. That negative self-talk will grow like a weed into your subconscious, and you’ll manifest the exact results you predicted for yourself.

That means we should talk about your self-talk. Negative self-talk is probably the worst mistake I encounter with law students disappointed by their first semester performance. Attitude is everything: Telling yourself you are going to fail, that you’re going to get a bad grade, never going to get a job, never going to …….. It’s depressing. Worse, it affects your view about your abilities long-term. It’s as if you are trying to climb a mountain with 1,000 people telling you that you can’t possibly do that. It is a sure-fire way to assure you will not do your best on future exams. Your lack of confidence will also come across strikingly clear in job interviews.

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Replace the chatter from your monkey mind (the anxiety in your brain; affiliate link) with something positive. Your monkey mind will distract you. Don’t let it. If your mind starts to wander there, tell it (quite loudly) to stop. Nothing good comes from worrying and from self-doubt. However, a lot of bad can come from it, particularly when trying to focus.

Finally, come up with a mantra. Something positive that you can say over and over to yourself when the monkey mind comes in, or when you are engaged in negative self-talk. Don’t have one? Here’s a freebie: “I CAN succeed and I WILL succeed.” You will.

LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here and on Twitter (@lawprofblawg). Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.

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