The Pressure to Maintain and the "Top Five"

Earlier this week, the College of Law issued our new grade point averages and class rank. It was the first time in a year that the school has assessed my position, and my class should not be sorted again until the final ranking is issued after graduation next year.

I was very happy upon receiving the new rank. If I could graduate with my current statistics, I would take it without hesitation. All of the past year was spent trying to raise my GPA and class rank to make up for the mild disappointment of the grades from my first semester of law school.

This goal I have now met.

So, I enjoyed my new position for about an afternoon. That night when I laid down to go to sleep, however, I felt a new and different sort of pressure beginning to creep into my brain.

Now, I have to maintain my spot, I thought. I have climbed the ladder consistently every semester of law school. During my final year, I must work to make sure that I do not drop.

But my study habits should not change much next year, and I know that the pressure I am beginning to feel is nothing compared to the pressure those at the very top of my class must experience- those who are the top five or the top ten.

I do not know who is #1 in our class, and I can understand why that person might want to keep it a secret. A huge target gets drawn on your back, and you become the object of curiosity and envy among people used to making As and being at the top of the class for their whole lives. Your peers study your actions more closely, and some, I am sure, are secretly hoping to see what happens if you stumble.

I am friends with a few people who are in the top five- a couple from my class, a couple from the class that matriculated last year, and a couple from the class that just graduated. I also know the person who graduated first in her class from Florida State Law last year. They all handle the stress of being on top with modesty and politeness. It is no problem to admit here that they are much smarter than myself. They have a gear I am not familiar with and had not seen until I came to law school.

The difference between them and me is that they can learn much more in a shorter period of time than I can. They can listen to a detailed lecture once, do a complex reading assignment once, and get more from it and lay it out in a more organized fashion than if I had it repeated to me five times.

Earlier this semester, I had to miss a couple of classes due to a Mock Trial competition, and I asked one of my friends in the top five for her notes from those missed days. When she gave them to me, I just had to laugh at how good they were. The notes provided me with more information and in a better format than if I had been sitting in class myself. I actually showed them to my parents.

These students in the top five are the people who do not need to take courses tested on the bar exam. They will be able to grasp the requisite knowledge in the two month bar prep course after graduation. These are the people who should be judicial clerks, those prestigious jobs where one works for a judge, helping him or her draft opinions on all types of law.

And yet, when these "top five" go to work at huge law firms with the billable hour requirements, the firm gives them all that they want to handle. Even they are stretched and consumed by their work.

It lets me know that I could not survive, let alone be happy, in such an environment.

My angle, as I wrote about in my previous blog entry, is to become very knowledgeable in one particular area of law that involves the courtroom. I feel confident in the courtroom. Given a neutral set of facts to present to the jury, I have not yet met a person that I feel I could not beat in the courtroom, and this includes the top five students, professors, and current lawyers.

I am somewhat less optimistic about beating out my friends in the top five for the highest grade in a class. Still, the pressure of my trying is something with which they must constantly deal, and it is impressive that they can remain so relaxed and friendly with their colleagues.

Hopefully, I can act as graciously as them in trying to preserve my lesser status in the class ranks.

Until Next Time,

Nathan Marshburn