Grades of Wrath
So grades are now officially out. My thoughts.
In related news, I bring you bathroom graffiti from the bathroom of the local coffee shop below the graduate student housing (Manville).
***
"Bush is the devil."
(In different handwriting just below) "An agent of the Devil. And so are the 51% who voted for him."
"Reach down! You've got Bush by the balls."
"While we're at it, fuck NAMBLA."
[Drawing of TV set] "Idiot box!" (written inside).
"A closed mouth gathers no foot."
***
Said in a conversation:
"When you sit on the front of the bus and look back, it's just...deformed people, and I don't mean this in a physical sense." -- Anonymous.
In related news, I bring you bathroom graffiti from the bathroom of the local coffee shop below the graduate student housing (Manville).
***
"Bush is the devil."
(In different handwriting just below) "An agent of the Devil. And so are the 51% who voted for him."
"Reach down! You've got Bush by the balls."
"While we're at it, fuck NAMBLA."
[Drawing of TV set] "Idiot box!" (written inside).
"A closed mouth gathers no foot."
***
Said in a conversation:
"When you sit on the front of the bus and look back, it's just...deformed people, and I don't mean this in a physical sense." -- Anonymous.
posted by Armen Adzhemyan at 2:32 PM
9 Comments:
Grades are a crock. The only people who care about grades are students... and that's only because students don't know any better. Too bad Anonymous Law Prof's blog is down, because in reading it, you'd get a good idea of how much law professors DON'T freakin care about grades.
When I was at Boalt (back in the day), we just assumed all grades were by weight... the further your blue book flew down the stairs between the first and second floors, the higher your grade. (Ties broken by class attendance. If the prof didn't take attendance, then ties broken by how good your politics are.)
Don't believe me? Ask any prof to review your blue book with you! Go ahead... you CAN do it. If you're lucky, you'll see a few check marks in the margin. Chances are, you won't see a damn thing. Not one spot of ink not your own. BTW, blue books are KEPT... they used to be in a storage room, in filing cabinets, on the Basement floor. If you enter the basement floor via Bancroft, the room is right there. Not sure if that space has been reallocated to like, Private Groping Room, or something... but that's where the blue books used to be.
I've always thought the best thing about first semester 1L grades is that the red-hots from first semester figure out they aren't "all that" and shut the hell up. The bummer is, of course, a whole new set are turned red-hot by a belief in the merit their arbitrarily assigned grades.
You know what my degree from Boalt says? "University of California Regents"... blah blah blah... "Juris Doctor." Same thing your's is going to say, regardless of grades.
I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, I have echoed the same sentiments.
Right... so agreed: Grades are a Crock. Moreover, their only utility may be in discerning the top 20 law school exam takers in any given cohort. Whoop Dee Doo.
I sincerely doubt that firms make decisions based solely, or even mostly, on grades. It's more likely that they use grades as an excuse not to hire people they don't like. I know Boalties with straight-Ps who slave at firm jobs the grade-grubbers would die for. I know Boalties who did federal clerkships even though they CP’d (that’s a Sub-P for those who haven’t seen one on your own transcript) Professional Responsibility (thanks, Steele…). What? An NC (that’s what a Fail looks like on your Boalt transcript) in Contracts? Took it again as a 2L and got a P? Sure… come work for prestigious, national IP firm for a six-figure salary circa 2001. Despite curling up in fetal position on the bathroom floor, racked with sobs, at least twice a year – made partner in five years. The indentation on your face from your imported, hand-painted, Italian bathroom tiles: reality. Grades: total BS. No correlation between grades and success in practice. Any firm unwilling to admit it, doesn’t deserve your energy, creativity or time.
Be a good person. Be cool to work with. Do your best. Learn a lot. You'll get hired. Most of what you learn at Boalt isn’t learned in class, anyway. They call it Boalt Hall, because everything is bolted down and the real education happens in the halls.
As pointed out by commenters at de novo, grades are really pretty handy for creating animosity and division among cohorts. You can read all about the evils of grade competition in the well-known literature. But if anyone reads that stuff and says, "Hey! Sign me up for that!" then they shouldn't be applying to Boalt and they definitely shouldn’t be accepting admission. They have schools for that kind of crap, and most of them are in the 2nd and 3rd tiers... for a REASON! (Hello Hastings!)
Do you know how the changes in grade policy came about? Students! Student activism. Fed up students who said, “To HELL with this CRAP!” To hell with letter grades. To hell with ranking. To hell with posting grades – by SID or by name. Back in the day students at Boalt actually created the change they wanted. Since implementation of Proposition 209, Boalt students seem to only protest changes they don’t like. Y’all hold signs. Y’all chant. Y’all write letters of disapproval (after first debating on listserves). So effective…. HA!
You know what IS effective? Direct action. How about setting up a schedule of students to sit on Jesse Choper’s desk EVERY DAY, ALL DAY in order rid of him as Dean. It happened. It worked. *sigh*… RIP the legacy of direct action at Boalt… barely a memory, held dearly among us alumni.
For an idea on the kinds of changes organized law students can make through direct action see:
Critical race coalitions: key movements that performed the theory.
U.C. Davis Law Review, Summer 2000 v33 i4 p1377-1427
Sumi Cho; Robert Westley
Many thanks to the anonymous blogger above for insights and reassurances about the importance of grades to practicing attorneys. I guess I would just like to express my incredulity as to the intensity of the statement.
Saying that grades don't matter at all because one can name people in high places who got bad grades sounds to me a lot like saying race doesn't matter in american politics/law because look at Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, and Condoleeza Rice. It's just a little too much to swallow even though I'd really like to.
Also, none of the cited examples are of law professors with low grades -- are there such examples? My guess is yes, but they are rare. And I think that gets to the real issue. I don't think that people claim that grades are everything. The claim is just that grades indicate how difficult the climb will be -- good grades reduce the slope of one's path of choice (making the climb easier). I mean, will anyone really say that good grades are a detriment to the clerkship, the big firm job, the public interest job, the professorship?
Stefani
Stefani,
If you think I'm over-stating the case about grades, that might be because you miss the central point of my case. My point is: Straight P's are NOT "bad grades."
It is a student-perpetuated belief that P's are "bad grades." Stop saying that P's are "bad grades"; hell stop believing it.
Here's an amusing aside about the value of a P. In two of the classes I took at Boalt from visiting profs, I received P grades. However, both visiting Profs sent a letter to me saying, at their schools where there is no curve and there are letter grades, I would have received an A for my work in thier classes. Believe me, not all of my P's were equal to A's... but some of them probably were. Shoot some of my P's were probably equal to CPs... so WHAT?
The real value of Boalt's grading system is it allows you-the-student more control over your time and energy resources. You don't have to spend a ton of time studying for a classes you hate in order to maintain an appropriate GPA. At Boalt you can say, "I hate this class... I'm never going to practice in this area... so I'll slack on this class and take my P." That frees you up to work harder in other classes that you do care about or to spend more time at something you care about... like volunteer work, your clinical program, your externship... your friends, your family, your health... blah blah blah... Boalt's grading policies are designed to give you more control and to increase your quality of life. Why throw that away by getting all competitive about grades?
I think your "race still matters" comment is a red-herring and doesn't remotely support the better part of your statement. So I'll only nod to the red-herring by saying, "Duh... Of course race still matters." Only in Post-209 Berkeley would anyone even have a conversation about whether race still matters. Sheesh!
Your point about the role of grades in getting professor gigs, is well taken. I think, however, you and I are making two different points. My point is, you can do good work, have a good job, makes as much (or as little) money as you want, and pay back your student loans, with straight P's (or even a couple of CPs or an NC). And no one, after OCIP, is going to give a rat's ass what your grades were. (Just like no one in law school gives a rat's ass what your LSAT score was.) Nor will grades matter in terms of your abilities in practice. In these senses, grades don't matter.
Your point is "What if I'm interested in the elite track, like a professor gig? Are you saying grades don't matter there?"
Nope, sorry, grades matter there. All the "elite" tracks have "elitist" requirements. I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying, IT IS until people decide to change it (see previous comment about activism). So if you want to be a law professor at a top 20 law school or an associate at the law firm of "We Pretty Much Only Hire Former Supreme Court Clerks" or you want to work at the elite level in the public sector, DOJ's OLP, say-- then you're going to have to get on the elitist track.. which requires Order of the Coif kind of grades. And that's fine, if you're into that... more power to you. But, PUHLEEZE, do the math! Each Boalt cohort is roughly 270 people. Say 10-15 people from each cohort are going to be Order of the Coif (I'm generous). Great for them, but why should the other 255 people believe they are "less than" because they aren't OotC?
The requirements for elite gigs are elitist. I'm not saying the requirements are "bad"... or that the people who meet those requirements aren't smart or aren't worthy. I'm simply saying, the requirements are designed to exclude; designed to protect and perpetuate power for those who already have it.
Law professor gigs are a particularly funny (paradoxically-funny) example of elitist requirements. Let's think seriously, and comparatively, about the requirements there. Some law professors have PhDs (usually in History or Philosophy, but lately many in Econ.) or MAs (usually MPA's and MPPs) in addition to JDs, but the minimum requirement to teach at a law school is a JD. If you want to teach at a Top 20 institution (*sheesh!*) then your JD should probably be from Yale, Harvard, Chicago or Stanford. Think about that. A JD is the total extent of higher education required to be a law professor. In all other academic disciplines, a PhD is required to teach at a Univeristy *like* Berkeley. Compared to a PhD, a JD is a glorified Masters. Hell, a JD IS a glorified Masters.
Of course, there are also a lot of other requirements to teach at a law school. Did you do law review, get the right fellowships, the right clerkships, and, increasingly, have you published? I'm not saying PhDs should be required to teach at a law school. Stef, I'm using your example of law prof gigs as a means of thinking critically about the requirements -that is, what we say counts as MERIT- for any gig. Those requirements change over time, for a number of reasons (often pressure for access from the non-elite). Want to read an interesting article about law-prof gigs from a Boalt professor that also happens to make my point (without agreeing with me)? Check out this article:
MERE BRILLIANCE - THE RECRUITMENT OF LAW PROFESSORS IN THE UNITED-STATES
By GORDLEY J
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LAW 41 (3): 367-384 SUM 1993
The end kinda trails off... so go ask Gordley what he meant if you're unclear. Also, there are MUCH better studies of access to the legal academcy... so... you know... research it.
While pointing out that elitist requirements are elistist requirements, I also want to point out that meeting the requirements is insufficient to get an OotC into The Elite. Merit, however f-ed up and self-servingly it is defined, is not determinate. Connection is most often the determining factor: Who knows you, who you know, and who is willing to talk to the people they know about you. (see also, Gordley's article) For example, two of Boalt's most recent Supreme Court clerks got their gigs because a) they are OotC SkyWalkers AND b) Herma knows Ginsburg (they surfed the first-wave of feminism together back in the day).
So here's a more nuanced version of my original point... sure, grades matter for SOME people in terms of access to SOME very particular types of gigs. (Some of those people are intellectual giants, total SkyWalkers and they have my respect... not because of their jobs, or their grades but because sheesh... they're way smarter than me. I'm just fine with that. While I'm really pretty damn bright myself, I'm glad there are people who are even smarter than me.) HOWEVER, 1) grades are not necessarily an indicator of intelligence. More often, they are an indication of one's ability to take law school exams. And 2) just because grades matter for SOME people SOME of the time, doesn't mean that grades MATTER... Let's just say grades are relevant but not dispositive. For MOST people MOST of the time grades just don't matter. So students should not live their lives by grades. It's STUPID. And THAT is my point.
I love this. Just a few points from me:
1) Kerr's thoughts on 1L grades2) My thoughts on conflating merit with grades/scores.
3) I'll re-link to this post in a day or two to bring these comments to the limelight.
4) Example of direct action by Boalt Students (from the perspective of the nay-sayer).
Ahahaha! Armen, you kill me. Which is probably why I tune in a couple of times a day (my version of a "smoke break"). I'm glad you have wireless in at least one classroom, so you can keep up with your blog. When I was at Boalt we didn't have wireless. I played Hearts. Others were more "Free Cell" or "Solitaire" types.
That you connected merit, access and affirmative action is interesting and shows promise. We can, and should, interrogate "merit" all day long. The more you pick at merit the more it becomes dependent upon context. So the goal could be to select merit criteria which closely correlate with success factors in a given field.(See http://www.law.berkeley.edu/boaltgradsurvey).
However, not everyone goes to law school to be a lawyer. Some want to be academics. Some want the education. Some can't or don't want a "real" job for three more years. There's just a lot of different reasons why people go to law school; being a lawyer is one, prevalent reason. But should law schools only admit people who want to be lawyers? Should law schools designs curricula solely around the skills required for lawyering? And different people have different ways of learning... some like skills-based classes; other's like theory-based classes. Oh, and what KIND of lawyering? I hated practice classes... "Damn, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life and you want me to start now?" I hated Moot Court; I hated doing Oral arguments. I hated Appellate work. For my brief I wanted to write, "If I promise never to write another appellate brief for the rest of my career will you please give me a P?" It was just a totally stupid requirement for the kind of work I wanted to do when I graduated. I'm sure others felt that way when they took a class with a theory-heavy professor.... but I liked the theory, the policy work. I like the ideas, values and thinking behind why we do what we do. The time I spent processing theories while in law school helps me set good policy, make good decisions and resolve new and interesting problems today. Can I write an appellate brief? Probably not. Different Strokes, Willis.
Ideally, you want different strokes. The deal is, you have a BROAD range of selection criteria so as to include a broad range of people, interests and information in your law school. It's called "comprehensive review" and it works if the goal is to have a rich, diverse and interesting education.
As for Affirmative Action... well, that discussion is a lot about allocation of scarce resources. Allocation issues always come down to values. At Boalt, it's a particularly contentious discussion because Boalt is a public law school. So Boalt isn't just allocating access to JDs (and whatever follows); it's allocating a state subsidized education. It doesn't actually cost less to go to Boalt than it does to go to the-little-red-school-on-the-Farm. The people of California are subsidizing your education, so it costs YOU less. Boalt, and you, have an obligation to the public because you are utilizing their resources. Whoever doesn't like that obligation should not apply to or accept admission to Boalt. Go to Stanfurd.
I believe that part of meeting our obligation to the public means keeping public institutions accessible to the public. The entire public. Call me crazy. And, I don't buy the "acheivement gap" at the elite law school level. The "gap", insofar as it exists statistically, is an artificial creation bolstered by a false belief in narrowly (self-servingly) defined "merit." Anyone who actually believes they got into Boalt because they were better, faster, stronger, smarter than the other 6572 people who applied should serve on the admissions committee. It's humbling. You realize after reading a couple hundred applications that any one of those people could be at Boalt, do the work, graduate, get good jobs and be good lawyers (or writers, or teachers, or social workers once they get sick of being lawyers). So you have to start asking yourself, "How can I allocate this scarce resource in a way serves the people who are shelling out the money for it AND creates a creative, dynamic, varied learning environment?" And while you're there, think, "Do I really want to go to school with this person?" J/K.
I could say a lot more about Affirmative Action, but Goodwin's got my back and is more skilled in the art of brevity.
I forgot to add in my original post that the most important thing I did in law school was get laid. A Lot.
Hot off the press, On Getting Laid. A lot! Well, more about the consequences that follow. I'm starting to see a pattern emerging.
A,
No such "consequences" for me... I'm one of those wacky-left-of-liberals who still believes in birth control and refuses to ever go back to criminalizing women and doctors who perform abortions. So when I was getting laid all over the place in law school, I was just practicing. Great training for the legal kind of practice.
More Re: grades on Jeremy's Blog.
http://jeremyblachman.blogspot.com/2005/01/to-tune-of-wannabe-by-spice-girls-yo.html
My thoughts:
1. HLS people are funny.
2. Gentleman's A's. Nuff said.
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