Lowering the standards of “gunner”
As the semester has progressed, I’ve turned into something of a recluse when it comes to my fellow Legal Eagles. It’s not intentional of course — like I mentioned last week, it’s a combination of trying to avoid drama and utilizing an apartment that’s catered to my learning style. Madame Prosecutor and I occasionally talk outside of class to study, and DMoff mentions ASG business every now and then. But since the whole study group thing didn’t really pan out and I’m hardly ever at the law school aside from class, I don’t have many non-class friendships among the 1Ls 
I’ve got one exception, a young lady who I haven’t actually come up with a nickname for yet. We’ve got one of those friendships where we’d probably be perfect for each other romantically, but we also both have pre-existing interests so instead you end up with the bona fide respect and admiration of two competitive people going through a common struggle. She basically keeps me in check when my exasperation gets out of line and has occasionally been my conscience vis-Ã -vis law school.
That backstory is the preface to a conversation over the weekend, where she informed me that several folks (and by “several” I mean 3; any guesses on who?) have started referring to me as one of the class “gunners” because I posted my midterm grades here at law:/dev/null.  Professor Torts inadvertently helped that narrative on Friday when no one volunteered to brief the only case we had (an easy one, Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Co. (248 N.Y. 339)), so in the interests of getting out of class I offered — and got referred to as “one of our favorite volunteers” in that not-quite-sarcastic-but-not-quite-not-sarcastic tone that makes someone think they’ve volunteered one time too often 
For the sake of brevity, we’ll ignore the general silliness that goes with the secrecy around law school grades. As much as people claim school is all about competition, markets grow over time and everyone is better off collaborating than competing. Â Basic economic principles.
The point that really threw me is that my grades were decisively unimpressive. I’m in 5 classes — I did really well in 2 (CivPro and Property), really bad in 2 (Torts and LRA), and I’m firmly in the middle for the 5th (Contracts). And while we all know gunners don’t necessarily have good grades, the logician in me thinks good grades would need to be a prerequisite if posting them is going to be treated as a criteria for gunner-hood.
So my grades are essentially average. I don’t volunteer unless it helps us get out of class sooner. I’ve crashed and burned on numerous occasions when I am called on. I’m rarely at the law school, not involved in school-related activities, and stopped over-dressing after orientation.
If that makes me a gunner, y’all have really lowered the standards. jsyk. 
Anyhow, I’m off to bed. Â Marine Corps’ birthday is tomorrow, meaning an extra-grueling PT session in the morning. Night everybody! 
