One L (26 page)

2/17/76 (Tuesday)

I saw Stephen today after Law and Public Policy. He had read a notice on a bulletin board and when he informed me of what it said, a little wiggle went through my belly.

“Grades tomorrow,” he said.

I will not pretend that in the weeks since exams, I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about grades. Tomorrow will be when the music gets faced. Like everyone else, I can't help assuming that the results will be highly predictive of my future law school performance, which in turn will dictate much of what happens to me when I get out of this place.

One of the most immediate effects of tomorrow's marks is that they will serve as a first cut for Law Review. I admit that the more often I think about being on the Review, the better I like the idea. Over time, it is hard not to be taken with the prominence of the
Harvard Law Review
. It is quoted in judicial opinions, relied on, deferred to throughout the legal world. In keeping up with Morris's course, I now often go to the libe to consult the journal articles and I've begun to realize that I would probably enjoy being part of their production.

Not that I expect that to happen. Anybody who gets two Bs tomorrow will probably be out of the running, and I suspect I will be in that category. The word is that almost everyone at HLS gets Bs, although the precise distribution of grades is one of the most closely guarded secrets at the place. The registrar keeps the information under wraps to prevent any efforts at top-to-bottom-of-class ranking, which was dropped in the 1960s. It is generally known, though, that the registrar sends a record of past marks in first-year courses to each professor. Hypothetically, the teachers are free to disregard those figures, but it's a safe bet that most keep the past distribution of grades in mind. The students tend to think in terms of a fixed curve, with a lot of speculation about the ratio of grades. One kid I met in the gym locker room informed me authoritatively that only ten percent of the grades are As. But Wally Karlin said that Nicky Morris had told him that the usual distribution broke down twenty/sixty/twenty, As, Bs, and Cs, with a smattering of Ds and Fs. Whatever the curve in each course, the kind of consistently high performance which leads to Law Review is rare. One thing I know for sure is that after three years, no more than eight or nine percent of each class has the average of A-minus or better which is required for graduation
magna cum laude
.

Exams were too crazy for me to feel I could predict my grades with any accuracy. I imagine Torts will be higher than Crim. In the past weeks, I have tended to strike little bargains with myself, trying to hold off my dread of Cs, by not thinking too much about the possibility of As. On the whole, I guess I'd feel good about a B and a B-plus. It would put me on the track toward graduation with honors, which would be a nice reward after three years of slaving. The real goal, however, is to resist the familiar HLS vibes and to be comfortable with myself tomorrow, no matter what the results.

 

At the end of Civil Procedure the next day, Nicky Morris gave us a little speech.

“I don't think you should be getting the grades you'll be receiving this afternoon. I've always thought that the first year should be pass/fail. None of you are far enough along for these grades to reflect with any accuracy any of the permanent, highly ineradicable differences between people which are measured by exams. So I urge you not to take these grades this afternoon too seriously. Absolutely nothing that you would like to do in the future in the way of a legal career will be determined by them. Nothing. Not teaching. Not jobs with firms.”

Phil Pollack, sitting next to me, leaned over and whispered, “Notice he doesn't mention Law Review.”

I noticed. We were all thinking the same thing. Though an admirable effort, Nicky's speech did little to relieve the prevalent anxieties. By the end of the day many people would feel that limits had been fixed.

The plan the registrar had hit upon for the distribution of report cards required all 1Ls to present themselves at two o'clock at one of two classrooms in Langdell, to receive their marks. Many of us could picture the stampede to those rooms and resented having once more to submit to the mass. The registrar later explained that that had simply seemed the fastest means of getting the reports distributed. As it was, 1L anxieties about grades had appeared to her so pronounced that she'd sped things in her office, so that first year marks were coming out weeks before those of second-year and third-year students.

I played squash in the afternoon and showed up late in Langdell to avoid the two o'clock crush. At the hour, apparently, there had been a long line. I was told that people had filed into the room and emerged expressionless, the grade sheet clutched against their chests while they mumbled that they had not looked at it. By the time I arrived the crowds had dispersed. Downstairs there were a few people from another section standing around. I heard one ask another how he'd done and the reply: “I won't make the Law Review.”

As I headed up toward the room where the grade reports were being handed out, I saw Stephen coming down the stair-case. There was more in his face than a smile—his expression was animated by something wild, a profound kind of glee. I did not have to ask.

“You did well,” I told him.

He laughed out loud. “A-plus and an A.”

“My God.” I pumped his hand. The grades were astronomical. “That's wonderful.”

I asked him to wait and hurried on up. The huge classroom was quiet. The woman from the registrar's office removed a long computer slip from a book of them.

“Very nice,” she said before she handed the sheet over.

An A-minus in Criminal, a B-plus in Torts. I would not make the Law Review, I thought at once, but I had done well. I felt light-headed, just from meeting the reality of all of this after worrying so long.

I headed down to find Stephen. Sandy Stern had now positioned himself at the foot of the stairs, asking people their grades as they sifted past. Sandy himself had done quite well, an A and an A-minus, but he was not satisfied. “I'm not sure I'll make Law Review,” he explained. Apparently, he'd decided to survey everyone whom he considered competition. When he asked me how I'd done, I felt almost flattered. In the days before, I had not been certain whether I would discuss my marks. Talking about grades seemed a lot like talking about how much money you make—there was no way to be tasteful. Speaking freely risked envy or contempt. Remaining silent seemed to magnify the importance of something I wanted to treat as meaningless. In the end, I made no conscious choice. When Sandy asked, I just blurted.

Behind me, Myra Katchen came down the stairs. She was a former grad student in philosophy, good in class—another of the people Sandy would consider a hot competitor. He asked how she'd done.

“Okay,” she answered, “but I won't make Law Review.”

Down the hall tunnel, I found Stephen and walked him to Harkness, where I bought him a congratulatory Coke. As we sat in the lounge, Aubrey appeared. There was no need to ask how he'd done. He looked gray. He put the coffee cup he was carrying down on the table.

“Smack in the middle of the class,” he said. Bs of some kind, that meant. Aubrey had worked doggedly first term, unafraid of confessing his ambitions. He wanted the most selective firm, the highest salary, the Review. I felt he deserved better for his honesty. And after going bust out in LA, he would, I'm sure, have savored some great triumph now, reaffirming all his best hopes for himself.

The three of us tried to make conversation, but it was self-conscious and strained. Stephen eventually told Aubrey his grades and Aubrey congratulated him. As I stood up to leave, I told Aubrey that we had some consolation—at least next year we'd be able to join Stephen for bag lunch over at Gannett House, where the Law Review is located.

Stephen smiled then murmured almost to himself, “I guess I will be over there.”

I checked on Stephen for some sign of humor, but there was none. Four exams remained in the spring, and we had all heard stories about 1Ls who received two As first term and never saw As again. But looking at Stephen I could see he had caught a whiff of a high ether. He knew what he wanted, now. He knew where he belonged.

I walked Aubrey back to his locker. Willie Hewitt came by, bragging about two Bs.

“Not bad for a screw-off, huh?” he asked me, as he passed. Aubrey seemed to wince. He stared into his empty locker.

“I'm so tired of being competent,” he said suddenly. “I've been competent all my life. I wish I could be either the best or the worst. This is just so goddamn dull.” He shook his head and laughed a little. I clapped him on the back.

Up in the library I tried to study, but I was still in a daze of contradictory emotions—shame, envy, pity, pride. I had put such confused feelings into grades and exams that a tangle was bound to emerge. I felt an ugly and powerful jealousy of Stephen, but I realized my grades were good. I had heard enough from 2Ls and 3Ls before to know that along with many others I remained vaguely in the running for Law Review, if far from the front of the pack. Much of the hallway commentary and my own first reactions were really expressions of regret at a diminished chance.

Mike Wald came up to me as I sat there. “The 1L grades come out?” he inquired.

I said yes, why did he ask?

“Lot of red faces.” Mike gestured toward the rest of the library. “People crying.”

Incredibly, Mike was right. That afternoon and in the next few days I found that many of my classmates had taken grades hard; they were glum, disconsolate, and indeed, occasionally teary. Virtually all of us had been outstanding students, accustomed to the reward of high grades. Those high marks had been the means by which we'd made our way through the world—to famous colleges, to Harvard Law School. They were success itself, the underpinning of self-images, taken, over time, less as limited reflections of our abilities than as badges of personal merit. Now, as predicted, most people had received Bs, grades many had rarely seen, having gone to college in an era when straight As were not uncommon. For several, the step down was a terrific blow and the reactions were sometimes extreme. Clarissa Morgenstern, I was told, had had two B-pluses and had become hysterical. She wept wildly and swore to leave law school. Others seemed mammothly insulted. Kyle had grades like mine.

“I couldn't believe it,” he told me. “I looked down there and I thought, No, there must be something wrong, one of them's not an A.”

The day after grades came out, we all spoke of nothing else. It was another of the times Annette had come with me to school, and when we got home she told me how offended she had been by the constant gossip about marks, the ceaseless comparisons. It seemed to her ugly and obsessive and adolescent. No doubt it was. But most of us—aside from the few with two As—needed the reassurance of knowing how others had done, just to be certain that a B was not a sign of incompetence. Phyllis Wiseman was in her early thirties, a wife and mother who even as a law student had continued to place her family first. She was widely admired in the section for holding that kind of distance on the law school's demands. But when grades came out, even Phyllis felt she had to take part in that great show and tell.

“I've never been a busybody,” she told me, “I've never been a gossip. I don't care what my neighbors do. But I'm just crazy to know how everyone did.”

As it was, few people spoke of Cs, although it was well known that a large number were always given. Most of the students who'd received Cs seemed to have been shamed into silence. And there was an even more disquieting indication of how deep the discomfort over grades ran. As the comparison of marks continued, I heard several comments to the effect that the number of high grades seemed disproportionate. Some of that was a statistical quirk. Given the queerness of the exams, the results on individual tests were bound to be somewhat random. With only two grades in, there were a lot of people who, like me, had received one A, but would not over the long haul find themselves making As half the time.

Yet even taking that into account, the grades seemed peculiarly high, particularly when one considered what we'd heard about the strictness of the usual HLS curve. I asked Mike Wald about it one afternoon in the library when we had a longer talk about grades.

“People lie,” Mike told me. “That happens a lot around here. Some people just can't deal with not being at the top. They lie to their classmates and they lie to employers. It's gotten so bad,” Mike said, “that firms are thinking about requiring a transcript before they hire.”

Eventually, the talk in the section about grades, and the craziness which surrounded them, began to subside. But a wake of bitterness remained. People recovered from the hurt of being in the middle, of being cut out of the race for the Law Review, but few seemed to regard the whole process of examination and grading, law school style, as any more sensible. So many of the results had appeared irrational. Terry, for instance, had banked everything on Criminal. He put all his study time into it, and more or less wrote off Torts as a subject he would never comprehend. Yet in Crim he'd only gotten a B, while from Zechman he'd received a straight A. There were many stories like that. And there were also a number of people who'd demonstrated real insight into legal problems in class but who somehow had not done well on the exams. Ned Cauley was one. In a case like his, I was left wondering if the law school's system of blind grading—with a student's entire mark based on a test identified by a number and not by name—was worth it, or if it forced professors to ignore knowledge obviously relevant to their evaluations.

Most persistent among my classmates seemed to be an anger that there had been grades at all, that persons who were all demonstrably talented had been subjected to this terror of minuses and pluses, divided from each other, stacked up in tiers. I myself was willing, at moments, to concede that at either pole there might have been people worth noting. If someone really could make great sense of those exam narratives, then he deserved some commendation—he had a talent I didn't have. And at the other end, if students seemed not to have learned, it was appropriate to warn them of that. But for the great majority of us in the middle, it was hard to believe that these levels of fine discrimination, A-plus through B-minus, C, D, and F, could be made with much accuracy. A few years before, Harvard 1Ls had been given the opportunity to opt for pass/fail grades or simpler evaluation schemes—High, Satisfactory, Low, and Fail—but in an inexplicable reversal, the faculty had abolished those options a year before we arrived. We were left in a system which seemed close to capricious and which was often unavoidably painful when you considered its real-world effects.