happy to be a 1.5L

During the last half of finals, I was a fog of semi-depression. I took practice test after practice test for Contracts, but once it came time to perform, I choked. The constant tap-tap-tapping of keyboards blared past my earplugs. My eyes kept diverting to the screen next to mine. Thoughts of offer and acceptance were quickly displaced by questions like "Why are all these people going to the bathroom????" And once the proctor called time, I threw my materials onto her desk and ran to my car. After months of scoffing at people who couldn't take the pressure, I sat in the garage and cried. It was the lowest I felt in a while (which, thank God, testifies to how fortunate I have been in the past few years ...)

After a tearful venting session with Gary, I bought ice cream and rented "Angels in America" in a perverse attempt to purge these feelings of inadequacy. I still had two tests left, dammit, and one session of stupidity wasn't going to corrode my entire semester.

Even though I felt better about the next tests, and even though finals anxiety turned into winter break glee, a cloud still hung over my head of what doors my grades would quickly close. "Maybe I can pursue a career in radio," I thought. "Or maybe I can start a business. Oh, why didn't I just become a doctor because really, what good can my legal theories do for people like those affected by the tsunami?"

I was able to forget about these thoughts momentarily when I arrived in Chicago. I was ready to re-connect with friends from the not-so-distant past and with a place which has essentially been my adult home. I didn't have to worry about grades and my future because it was just too much fun to be silly again, to spend the day watching a humongous TV, to eat food with bibs, and to re-acquaint myself with my friends' various states of intoxication.

But then people went back to work, and I was left again with my new companions, the Ugly Red Casebooks. Former colleagues asked about finals and grades, and my throat constricted. "How's law school going?" they ask, and all I could muster was a faint smile and shrug "It's okay."

I wish I could say that these negative feelings gave way to a mature realization that grades are insignificant in the grand scheme of life, but alas, my mood remains hopelessly tied to those damned letters. I got a grade back on Sunday, and life doesn't seem so somber (although the never-ending rain here creates that effect). I'm ready for this new semester -- if only I wouldn't fall asleep reading Marbury v. Madison.

I didn't share my thoughts about my contracts exam when it happened because it felt too self-indulgent to mourn my grades -- and it still does. Then again, isn't a blog by definition an act of self-indulgence?