About grading: CLS is the second law school that I go to. In my first one (a law school in Taiwan, where law is provided as a college degree), there was no curve so professors could give whatever grades they liked. Professors wanted to be “nice” so it was common that more than 80% of the class got an A. Therefore, virtually no one studied hard. As a freshman (sophomore, or junior) all you had to do was party and drink every day, just like an American undergrad. The time I spent on studying last semester was at least twice the first three years in my Taiwanese law school combined. Sounds attractive, right? But in the senior year everyone started freaking out because what was waiting us was the bar exam, with an 8% passage rate.

In other words, in Taiwan we don’t need first year grades to distinguish students, but we still need something to make the distinction between the “good” and the “not-so-good.” (But it’s probably not as cruel as the first year curve, since you can always take the bar again if you fail this time.) So it brings me to another question: why is such a distinction based on exam-performance necessary everywhere? Can’t we distinguish ourselves in a more meaningful way? In an ideal world, every prospective employer would try to hire the applicants who are most competent for the job not simply based on grades, but on “a totality of circumstances.” And then we would train ourselves in a way that makes us cut out for the job we want.

Unfortunately, we are not living in an ideal world. Last week I went to a lunch session about career in teaching, and a panelist put it clearly: if you want a teaching career, the first thing is to get killer grades. It may not be true, but to some degree it does explain why people feel anxiety about grades: people are made to believe that grades affect our future.

Assuming CLS is not going to abolish letter grade this semester, I think there are two possible ways we can ease the anxiety. Firstly, we can choose not to believe the panelist that I mentioned. What he said is simply wrong; even though we have mediocre grades in the first year, we are still capable of doing everything as long as we train ourselves in the right way and acquire good lawyering skills in the law school.

On the other hand, we can also just recognize the fact that poor grades do keep us away from some specific jobs, the so-called highly selective ones. (That’s the reason why I mentioned Taiwan at the beginning as an example: without a license, you just can’t be an attorney.) However, there are still countless jobs out there that don’t require good grades. And some of these jobs may be even more meaningful and lucrative than the “highly selective” ones. For example, Taiwan’s 8% bar passage rate creates lots of law school grads without a lawyer’s license. Those people have to find some living other than being an attorney. To my knowledge, lots of them are living meaningful lives, the current Taiwanese President included.

Also, there is no Socratic in a Taiwanese law school. I'm still forming my perspective about the pros and cons of SM, and hopefully I'll have something to say about it as soon as possible. My primary idea leans toward positive side, but I do agree with Jonathan's doubt about the "extremely specific questions." (I remember once I was asked what was the primary issue of a case, and I answered "a component of the airplane is defective." But I forgot the name "altimeter" so the prof excruciated me for ten minutes.)

-- WenweiLai - 08 Feb 2010