What is law school culture like?

It's like high school. My law school is small - technically it's four buildings, but are all connected to form a single quadrangle structure. Students have lockers! Yeah, that was a welcome change for my back!

I have Professors who actually care about me - my understanding of the material, performance in class, and career prospects. In college, I did see a few Professors who similarly cared, but in law school, more Professors seem to care. The administration is similar; I have a feeling it's not as altruistic as it is for the Professors though. After all, the better we feel, the better we do, the higher the school's rank. But still, it's a great feeling to know that I have a support network to rely on.

The students are similar to those in high school, maybe just more "professional" about it. I am finding some close friends - people I would love to tell all my "secrets" (if I still have any). And many people who are hard to trust. People who tell you they like you and want to study with you, have dinner with you, etc., but all the while, who seem to be competing with you.

After all, the whole 1L class is setup to compete with each other. Classes are curved - so even if your section is full of geniuses, as soon as you hit the say 20% mark, the next genius gets a B+. Performance does not matter, relative performance does. And jobs go to the highest grades... the rest have to work twice as hard to recover and still risk going into a field of law they do not like! There is no middle ground. Many people are constantly aware of and pressurized by this setup. It's hard to build genuine relationships with such people.

What do I think of the competition setup? Well, you could say this setup reminds one of Aristotle. Aristotle said truth exists in your experiences. The more you experience life, the more you know about people, the closer you get to the truth. There is an urge to constantly gauge our abilities against that of our classmates'. That's one way of trying to get feedback in a law school semester where we get no feedback in our regular classes till the final (well, maybe except for that practice midterm when we didn't know any of the material that would actually be covered on the final)!

I am trying to stay inspired by my favorite Plato. Truth exists inside us as a perfection in an abstract place. I don't know what the perfect law student would look like. But that's what I aspire to be. I am far far below - maybe that's why I am constantly disappointed. But it does make me not compete with my classmates but instead see them as fellow passengers on the same journey. When I see others struggling the way I do, it makes me feel that we are all in the same strange boat, and I feel less lonely. When I see others succeeding, I feel more confident - that like my classmates, maybe I will also get closer to the perfect law student.

I think my approach works better for me. I feel less jealousy with respect to my star classmates. I feel more humble when I succeed. I do much better than I would if I compared myself to real flawed people.

I see some of the 2Ls and 3Ls and find them to be like me. Maybe many of my classmates will feel the way I do in a year, when many of us will have reasonable jobs waiting for us. I can't wait.