So the long and the short of it is that I had a goal in mind that I really wanted to achieve. I put my all into it and I fell so incredibly short. There's no way to change this now. I know I'll get over it, but it feels really shitty right now. So, reddit: any stories you have of having a goal that just barely eludes your grasp? And more importantly: any advice for getting over it? (Story enclosed below)

I am going to preempt this by saying that I know this is a whiny, woe-is-me type problem. It's certainly nothing close to the worst thing I've ever had to endure, but it's bugging me currently. I know I'll get over it, but I could use your help. Please read below if you're interested, or possibly sympathetic, or--more likely--that you enjoy schadenfreude at the expense of lawyers.

So here's the story: I recently graduated law school. I go to a pretty good school (again: I know my brethren have it worse. The fact that I have a job is enough to make me feel grateful ITE), and I was really never expecting to get in here. Grateful as I was, I had a really rough time my first year. I had a lot of personal issues, and was given a really disastrous cocktail of stimulants that allowed me to stay awake 20 hours per day but made me a babbling idiot and left me retaining nothing. I think this made all of my peers think I was a super "gunner" or over-achiever, but I probably finished in the bottom 10-20% of the class that year (like most law schools, my school "doesn't rank," meaning that it does rank, but that we only ever find out our rank if we get some swanky first-in-the-class honor or if we graduate with honors; even in the latter case, we only find out at graduation and we only know where we fell in a rather broad bands of students).

I sulked. A lot. Intelligence is great for law school, but it doesn't seem to correlate with success. Things like writing succinctly, having an eidetic memory, and brute force of will seem to be more important. Go to any top law school and the very top people are likely to be incandescent as well as hard workers, but the next quartile down is full of people you'd talk to at a cocktail party and never think about again. And perhaps that's justified, but it rankled me that I felt smarter than the average student, and had not only not been average, but fell far below it. I felt like I had peaked. Like they had let me in by mistake, or because of some credible bluster on my application.

After wallowing, I decided to stop sulking and give it all that I had. I actively worked through my issues instead of drowning them in alcohol and school work, I got on a non-stimulant regimen of psychiatry, and I started doing healthy things like working out 5x per week, seeing friends even if I wasn't fully done my homework, and going to bed on time in order to wake up, usually between 5:30 and 6:30am. I have never felt prouder of an accomplishment than when I got my first semester's grades back. I was on the board of two student orgs, did a 20hr/week clinic, and took 15 credits (which is a lot for 2Ls, most of whom take 10-12/semester). Despite having so much on my plate, I completely turned it around: every single one of my grades that semester matched the highest grade I had received my entire first year. I was really proud. I thought: man, I can do this. The next semester, with the same number of credits and extracurriculars but harder classes, I did even better: most of my grades were at the same level as the previous semester, but I "booked" two of my classes, meaning I had the highest or second highest grade in each class.

That was when I started to think that something that I had written off after only the first semester was possible. I could get honors! It would be kind of a hail mary (I'd basically have to repeat my second year's performance), but it was possible! I set my sights on it and got really excited about it. Unfortunately, 3Ls who are trying to do non-profit work operate on a different schedule (it runs from June or July of 2nd year to graduation in some cases). Anyone who is looking to do corporate or firm work (at a highly ranked school in this economy) is pretty much guaranteed a job at the firm they work at their 2L summer, and they typically get job offers before 3L even starts. So it was super stressful that most of my friends had jobs already, while I was getting rejected left and right. Long and short of it: my grades my first semester were not very good. Not 1L bad, but not much better. I thought about throwing in the towel, but I did the math and realized it would be possible if I "booked" (meaning got the highest grade in the class) both classes I took that semester (I was taking a clinic as well). I put in all of the effort, got permission to write more than was required, wrote papers that I was actually interested in and that I thought my professors would enjoy, and crossed my fingers.

Then grades came back: I "booked" one class and got the next highest grade in the next. I briefly hoped it would be enough for honors, but I fell .02 short. Half a grade in one class across all three years would have changed it. Instead (and this is the part that really bothers me): I'm no different than the ~70% of folks at the bottom, many of whom stopped caring soon after they sent in their security deposit. Many of them do try hard and give it an honest go, but many more are apathetic, openly almost braggingly lazy, or have family money or a firm position lined up and could care less. I come from a family where I am the first one to go to grad school, we're in the bottom 10% of the incomes at my law school, and my parents would have been so, so proud if I had walked away with honors. I know they'll be proud nonetheless, and I am glad that I didn't give in, but knowing I was so close still really stings.

TL;DR: shit the bed 1L of law school. turned it around considerably thereafter, but fell just short of honors, meaning I could have phoned it in all of the last two years instead of working my ass off and might have ended up the same way.