Reasonable Doubt: There Is Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself. And Bees. You Should Also Fear Bees.

I'm afraid of bees.  I have pretty funny reaction to them.  When I see one (or god forbid, more) coming at me, I panic.  I stop breathing for about an instant, and my heart jumps into my throat like I just took a nose dive off a tall building.  Once I was doing roof repairs and found a beehive just under the awning of the roof, and I literally jumped off a short building to avoid the swarm.

And that was before I got stung.

Since the roof incident, I've been stung, and I know it's no big deal.  I take a little pleasure in the fact that that yellow asshole is dead and I remain quite healthy.  Because of the irrational fear, I am also afraid of everything near me that might be a bee, until I see differently.  Knowing that a bee sting is nothing more than a very sharp rubberband snap does not assuage my fear in the slightest.

It also doesn't keep me indoors or out of the woods or even away from beehives (Sometimes I wander near them just to get my blood pumping.  Cheaper than coffee!).  I'll always be afraid of them, and I know I don't like the results of being stung, but hell, that's life and I'll be damned if I'm going to do anything any different.  Being afraid of bees is the worst part about them.  It's hard to look cool when you're ducking and dodging a butterfly just because you saw something flying out of the corner of your eye.

Where am I going with all of this?  Well, I'm afraid of Bs in the exact same manner.

School, for the large majority of the population, is not that hard.  I know this is coming from a guy who likes it so much that he's willing to spend 4 years working hard in college, 6 months of LSAT prep, and 3 months of applications just for the opportunity to go into massive debt and spend three years in a high pressure learning environment, but bear with me.

High school isn't hard.  For most people, it's actually quite fun.  The funny thing about high school is that there really isn't anything worth learning for its own sake.  Some kids figure this out early and just enjoy the ride.  They do what they have to, when they have to, but they don't worry about anything more than the end goal of getting out of high school.

Some kids fight this notion, and waste their time arguing with teachers, parents, and guidance counselors over how important any of this crap really is.  That was me, and I did poorly in high school judged by their grading system.  Bs came hard and fast, some Cs, some As, and I think one or two Ds.

Some kids never figure it out, but blindly struggle to learn everything in every class like it actually is important.  Did you really need to know about imaginary numbers?  The English Civil War? How much did you really need to know about chromosomes, the superego, and Samuel Tilden?  I know that there is always that off chance that you will end up on a game show and have to show off this knowledge to win prizes.  But take it from a guy who went to a lakehouse last summer, with power boats, wakeboarding and copious amount of alcohol, but then spent 3 straight days going through every single Trivial Pursuit card in the house: they call it trivia because it is.

The only thing worth learning in high school is how to be a good student.  A successful high school student really only needs to be able to answer one question: "Did you learn how to learn?".  If the answer is yes, you should move on to college.  Unfortunately, the way that schools determine if you learned how to learn is by testing you on what you should have learned.  I suppose there isn't a better way.  I got in to exactly one college, so I went there.

College isn't hard either.  Unlike high school, there is a little bit of choice involved.  People stress over choosing a college, but no one seems to stress over choosing to go to college.  Maybe more people should; it would save them a lot of money and a lot of problems down the road  If you want to do well, you have a choice.  If you don't want to do well, remember the saying "It pays to get As but Cs get degrees."  If you don't want to stay in college, you don't have to do that either.  College, for almost everyone, is really fun.  You meet people that are a lot like you no matter who you are, and this is your first chance to prove to your parents that you're worth the price of pregnancy test that you turned pink.

What you learn in college is a little like high school.  Again, you don't really need to know most of the stuff they're teaching you, but you need to know concepts and have a general sense of what goes on, and that's about it.  Business majors don't really need to remember supply and demand charts from econ, but they need to know the concept.  English majors don't need to know the symbolism of the second act of Hamlet, but they need to know... well... um.... so no one knows what English majors actually need to know, but screw them, they're only marginally employable.

Grades actually start to matter here for two groups of people.  People who want to go to grad school and people with majors where your GPA is an actual reflection of your future job performance (the hard sciences, engineers, accountants, and the like).  90% of college students don't really need to worry about much else when it comes to the GPA.  Your first job out of college will in no way reflect upon your transcript other than the name of the school you went to.  I worked in the HR department for a federal government agency one summer, and the people they were giving six-digit salaries to were taking classes like "Introduction to Guitar" and still only pulling a 2.7.  By the time you start applying to your second and third jobs out of college, all your employer cares about is where you worked before.  If you're like 90% of the college going population, don't stress the Bs, Cs, and Ds.   You won't find yourself any less employable in your field than anyone else graduating with you.

Unfortunately for me, I feel into the lucky 10% that cared.  A lot.  I figured out that I wanted to go to law school pretty early in the game, so I worked hard and tried for As, and yeah, I got them.  But in my mind they were never a sure thing.  I would see the B coming, and I would freak out in a very non-productive manner.  Some people would have studied more to make sure they wouldn't get stung, but I just worried more and did the same amount of work.  I was always afraid of the B, and I managed to stave it off for a while.  And then I got stung.

It didn't hurt.  The B came, and you know what?  My GPA didn't really flinch.  Over the rest of college, I got a couple more, and I kind of stopped caring that I was getting them, but then again, I was still afraid right before grades were coming out that I was going to get one.  Nothing to fear but fear itself.  I got into law school regardless of how many Bs I got, and I managed to drop "Greek Mythology" in time so that the D-minus I was pulling after a midterm and a paper didn't show up as anything but a "Withdraw".

I was a little nervous about actually going to law school.  I got into my first choice, and I was pretty pumped about that.  I got to spend the entire summer with everyone really REALLY proud of me; the moron who did all sorts of stupid (and illegal) things is now going to law school?  Tip of the hat to you, sir.  The closer that it got to August and the first week of school, the more I began to think: "Everyone was so happy that you got into law school.  Now all you have to do is go to law school." 

Shit.

Grades in law school are a little funny.  For the first year, they're a zero sum game; the curve is so tight that the only way for you to do better is to make someone else do worse.  Class rank and GPAs are kept very close to the vest.  You'll only hear rumors of the person next to you.  Grading is blind, so you can't kiss ass your way into anyone's good graces.  People stress and worry and panic over finals for three weeks leading up to them.  And then you wait. Grades don't come back for five or six weeks.  Your first semester grades don't come out until your tuition for second semester is nonrefundable; this is probably a good thing.

With all the importance and pressure there is about grades in law school it's fair to assume they're life and death, right?  Well, this is only conjecture, but I think we're all gonna be ok, no matter where we stand.  Someone has to be last in the class, but they still get to be a lawyer.  Where you went to law school will always follow you; see if you can name off the top of your head where Barack Obama went?  Now Bill and Hilary Clinton?  Now Sandra Day O'Connor and William Rehnquist?  You can probable assume that their transcripts were immaculate, but you don't really know.  You change your whole career arc by getting into one of those schools, but once you're there, you're there. 

Law school grades fall into one of three categories:  Top of the class, pretty good, and everyone else.  Just like when getting out of college, the only thing that matters is your first job, except this time, that first job is actually based on your grades.  After you have that first job, you might as well burn your transcript because nobody cares anymore.  Advice to everyone:  do what you want to do and other than that, do as much work as it takes for you not to worry.  For some people they will always worry; to them I would recommend drinking more.  Remember: your 4.0 in undergrad doesn't matter any more than my 3.0 in high school.  Bs are no big deal.

D.C.  writes "Reasonable Doubt" for The Bathtub on Tuesday mornings.  You can e-mail him at dc.bathtub@gmail.com.

Comments

[Mitch Hedberg]

If you are afraid of the letter B, you should also be afraid of the number 13, because a B is like a squished-together 13.

[D.C.]

It's a ghost! Call a priest!

[Inactive account]

If you're going to write as long as Tori you should at least include a picture of LiLo.

[Inactive account]

Just not these pictures: http://x17online.com/celebrities/lindsay_lohan/x17_xclusive_the_real_lindsay_pix.php

[D.C.]

Gorg-O, I was thinking that I might not be able to get away with 1500+ words unless readers had the weekend to catch up, but screw it. Tori has a life now, and I have to make up for lost time on here.