the daily snivel

Now that the exams and essays are marked and reported, I'm pleased to see that I did quite well this term, despite the marked third-year "I've got an articling position, please just let me out of here!" ennui that routinely afflicts law students and in any case had virulently ravaged me. I'm essentially a straight B+ student this term, save the "S" (for "satisfactory") I got in the pass/fail Clinic course (though I'm eagerly awaiting my transcript which will indicate whether, as it did last year, I was satisfactory "with distinction" or not) and the A- I received for the Exonerating the Wrongfully Convicted course, which is pass/fail for one term (of case work) and graded on a major paper in the second.

I worked extremely hard on that final paper, putting the better part of two weeks just into the writing, but had been lamely dodging my professor's request for a rough draft that he could review and comment upon all semester. Finally, I just handed in the finished version on the last possible day. This made his comments e-mailed to me most appropriate:

I have graded your paper and gave you an A-; it would
have been an A with a good edit, but that's life with
deadlines.

A parting jab, and one that is well-deserved. Still, I really enjoyed writing that paper and am pleased that I did so well with it. An A- in law school is no small feat (and while a full A is by implication even rarer, I'm thrilled enough at the one to not mind missing out on the other).