Actually they began yesterday, but more occurred today.
This week was the week that grades finally came out. The final grades I got for two of my courses last semester, the ones that were only a semester long, were not what I'd hope for. I blame extenuating circumstances for the lowest of the two, but I didn't enjoy either class. I suppose I always knew I was doomed to an unspectacular perforance.
After seeing my grades I walked around for several days feeling really stupid. I'd won the opportunity to do something distinctive this semester, to learn something I really wanted to learn, but the opportunity was dependant on the 2 final grades averaging to just a notch above what they turned out to be. The grades, along with being as annoyingly low as they were, also made the opportunity disappear. And instead of being distinctive, I became mediocre in just so many ways.
Somewhat shellshocked and panicked at the turn of the academic tide, I sought advice. All of it was to put aside my silly notions of accelerated learning, to abandon my desires to feed my tremendous curiosities and passions this semester. Just bear down and do absolutely nothing, nothing at all, other than focus on my first year curriculum.
I feel so trapped. I see other people, wits about them, seize the time in law school and make the most of it. Every minute of it. That's what I wanted to do, to squeeze out as much as I could every moment. But the advice is that I'd be the biggest moron to try to do that. Have patience, one of my professors said. There will be plenty of time to exercise my brain in the ways I want next year.
Patience is not one of my strong suits, and I've made that work for me. The upside to impatience is ambition and drive. I can get a lot done when I don't wait and instead go out and get what I want. I work harder when I know I have to work harder. When resigned to blandness, that's what I produce. I fear that's my fate, being trapped in this 1L box. I'm just a plain old law student, an indistinctive plain old law student, and it's miserable. That's not who I want to be. But it doesn't seem to be something I can change; I just have to ride it out. Which stands to be even harder, what with the situation being so de-motivating. And kind of frightening. I'm nearly 30 - isn't it time I started playing grown-up and start getting real things done? Ticking away another semester before I can get started feels like I'm wasting away time I can't afford.
So on top of learning all sorts of law stuff I also have to learn patience. Like that's really gonna happen with every ounce of my being screaming out that this isn't what I'm supposed to be.
This week I've been beaten, beaten down and beaten into this standardized mold. I guess I knew this shoe would drop when I signed up for this law school thing, I knew that the institution craved conformity and would try its hardest to make me comply. I thought I could resist but it turns out it's winning. I can't wait until I finally get to fight back.
(For what it's worth, it turns out that I'm not entirely stupid after all: the two grades for the midterms came out at least a notch ABOVE what I was required to have to preserve my opportunity. But all for naught. Except that I don't have to walk around thinking of myself as a complete nitwit.)