I’M DONE!!!

With law school classes and papers anyway

Today was my very last day of class as a student at the North Carolina Central University School of Law, and man it was a doozy.

Our final exam in NC Distinctions was at 12:00pm, ((I learned after the test that I flubbed half of the essay question, so now I have the agonizing wait to learn how badly I flubbed it and if I still have any “path to victory” at all… )) after which I immediately booked it down to my cubicle to grind out my unfinished two final papers in Arbitration. Not only did I get those done, but I also found my old notes to myself and typed up those missing journal entries too — if I can’t get an A or an A-, at the very least I’m gonna try to make Prof Arbitration think long and hard before giving me lower than a B+!

When I got home tonight I was completely drained mentally. I mean barely-forming-coherent-sentences drained. So I headed over to the bar next to my apartment to indulge in their cheese fries and a celebratory drink

I’ve just got my Professional Responsibility exam a week from today and I’ll be finished with law school. ((Can you believe that?? )) I can’t convey to you in words how TOTALLY @#$%ING AWESOME it feels to be done with papers and classes!

This is going to be one incredibly peaceful night’s rest. Have a great weekend everybody!

Tags: 3L, Arbitration, Exams, Graduation, NC Distinctions, NCCU Law

Well that sucks…

With the end of my last semester of law school (ever!) bearing down and final papers coming due, I’ve started worrying about…

…my grades.

Now before I get accused of being a flip-flopper or hypocrite after penning entries like “Your 1L Grades Don’t Matter,” let me explain. I stand by my argument that law school grades are irrelevant; I’ve seen enough people with GPAs lower than mine to be convinced legal employment is largely a game of networking and not being a prick, with jobs going to socially adept people who outwork their competitors regardless of artificial scholastic achievement. ((Or, as Prof Ks aptly put it back during 1L year: “When your competitors are sleeping, you’re hustling. When they’re hustling, you’re hustling harder.”)) My 1L grades were sufficiently low that graduating with academic honors was always a stretch, so graduating without them hasn’t been a big deal to me.

My family sees things a smidge differently though

Nan has been pushing me to drop the extracurricular stuff and focus on my grades for years now. And my mom still has a tendency to bring up National Honor Society inductions in high school — 15+ years ago! — when I needed a 3.5 GPA for admission and only had a 3.492. ((No attention paid to the fact I had -0- actual interest in joining NHS, since a good number of the members looked down on folks like me who spent the day playing either basketball, RPGs, or video games. But I digress…)) Now that law school is my “last hurrah” academically, and especially with my GPA so close to the cum laude borderline (currently at a 2.934 on NCCU Law‘s strict-C curve), I’m basically facing the either-or dilemma of graduating with honors or… giving my mom yet another story with which to embarrass me in front of people decades from now.

You can guess which option I prefer

I need a 3.667 semester GPA ((A-‘s across the board, and what would be my highest GPA ever in law school )) in order to reach a 3.004. One-half of one letter grade below that threshold — a single B+ in a sea of A-‘s — and I’d drop down to a 2.996 with all the parental (and grandparental) disappointment that comes with it.

So it was in that spirit I talked to Prof Ks yesterday, explaining my situation and asking for advice on how to gently twist professors’ arms for insight on how to get better grades. I was/am particularly vexed by Arbitration, where the Professor doesn’t seem to be a T. fan.

Not that she’s without justification. We have weekly journal entries to submit based on the readings for class, designed to ensure we’re sufficiently versed in the material to discuss the cases, and not surprisingly I’ve missed 2 this semester. ((Even so, I’m one of only a quintet of students who regularly participates in an often-silent class discussion. I always do the readings, they just typically get done the night before class when I don’t have time to write a journal entry.)) We were also supposed to observe one particular arbitration in person, but the day of that arbitration became the day I ended up on the phone all morning with Sallie Mae trying to explain away getting screwed by the Department of Education; I basically stood in the foyer to the courtroom all morning in my suit, missing everything but the verdict, and earning an incredulous look from the Professor when I explained why I wasn’t in the room.

Like I said, she’s not a T. fan. Anyhow, the bulk of our grade is based on a final research paper and in talking with Prof Ks his suggestion was just to ask Prof Arbitration after class how amazing I had to make this paper to snag an A-.

So I did.

And it did not go well…

Favoring the direct non-poker face approach, I just came to her office and asked the question: what can I do to get an A-?

Prof Arbitration’s response: “Oh you’re beyond that.” Her tone of voice made it clear that “beyond that” meant “too low for it to ever happen,” but just in case I misunderstood she made sure to clarify by adding “And what I mean by that is that it’s just not possible.”

Me, to myself: “Well d*mn.”

It definitely put a damper on the rest of the day. Now I’m stuck in this worst-case scenario where I have to go all-out in Arbitration (an elective) to make sure I get at least the B+, and somehow swing an A in one of my other 3 classes.

It’s gonna be a long couple weeks… 

Tags: 3L, Arbitration, Law Grades, Nan & Pops, Prof Arbitration, Prof Ks, The Curve, The Parents

Incorporated!

Hey y’all!

I know I disappeared again, and school still sucks, and I can’t really write much on this entry because I’ve got a paper due in Professional Responsibility at 9am and another NC Distinctions test at noon (right before a presentation in Arbitration at 10am on Wednesday on a topic I haven’t even started researching yet ).

But I wanted to post something so y’all don’t think I’ve pulled the plug

And I also wanted to let y’all know that we filed Articles of Incorporation for the North Carolina Small Practice Incubator & Collaboration Environment earlier today!

In addition to class, over the past couple weeks I’ve been immersing myself in the world of business plans and revenue streams and figuring out how to create a 501(c)(3) and then get it financed and off the ground. I’ve managed to convince some heavy hitters to take the first few slots on the Board of Directors: Peter Romary over in Greenville (the same Peter Romary mentioned here and here), Donald Thompson Jr down in Raleigh (CEO at the tech company I interned for 2L year), and Prof Ks here at the law school (this guy).

Now while the AOI paperwork gets processed I’m shifting back to classes, then after knocking out a couple more papers I’m transitioning back to writing the corporate bylaws, a handful of policies on things the nonprofit is going to need to address (conflicts of interest, personnel, etc), and figuring out how we’re going to fund the thing.

The more I work on it, the more I’m convinced we can turn this into a statewide economic engine… and maybe even expand nationally. 

We’ll see what happens.

But first I have to graduate, so that’s it for tonight — good night folks!

Tags: 3L, Arbitration, Career Prospects, NC Distinctions, NC SPICE, Prof Ks, Professional Responsibility