PT-LawMom

Can’t sleep. I’m totally exhausted but this new medication is working on my brain and i can almost feel it tingling so I got back out of bed, took a shower and came downstairs to watch TV. Anyway, I was thinking and here’s the thing. I’ve only taken four classes so far. We’re ranked against the 2008 entering class so our competition hasn’t even arrived yet! I just need to try to get this illness under control so I can buckle down and do well during this spring, summer and fall so that by the time rankings come out next spring, I am in a much better spot than I am right now. And I found out that there are at least two journals with no grade minimums for the write on competition so I can bust my ass to try to win a spot on those (and kill myself trying to keep the spot if I get it!). Thanks for listening. I’m a “sweat the small stuff”, control freak kind of girl so you’ll probably see the prior post repeated again several times before I graduate.

Everyone likes to say, “Don’t worry, you’ll get a job when you’re done with school,” but the people who say that all graduated very high in their classes and got great jobs. They seem to assume I’ll do well. Since that hasn’t happened after this last semester brought my grades way down, what now? At what point do I start to worry? What kinds of things do I do to make it more likely that I really will have gainful employment pain at or more than what I currently make? Sure, I’d love to be able to say I could take a large hit and take one of the many $40k public interest or government positions, but the reality is that not only will I still have a mortgage to pay a few years from now, but also student loans that will hit the instant I stop attending school. I need to face reality and plan accordingly. I see smart people like Certifiable who graduated from a top 50-ranked school with honors and a local clerkship and still didn’t find work until after she passed the bar, even then only on a contract basis. So what tips the scales? How do you not panic completely? Is it worth it when you aren’t in the top 10% (or, to be blunt, even the top 50% at this point)?

EDITED TO ADD: I don’t mean to be a whiny-pants here. My question is really for those of you out there (are you out there?!?) who weren’t at the top of your class, how did you make up for it? What did you do to distinguish yourselves?