CASS DA RE
<Features Editor>
Being the “best” in law school is a relative term. Therefore, the commonly cited piece of advice given to students throughout their academic lives, “just do your best,” falls woefully flat. I am sure the givers of such advice are well intentioned; they were likely trying to placate and pacify you before or after exams. Despite their respectable objective, their guidance gives us very little direction.
This superlative idea of “best,” the most high and most excellent, seems objective at first glance. It is the apex of achievement. It seems like a simple concept: whoever reaches the top of the mountain is the best. Law school turns this (like most other) logic on its head. Law school’s best is not measured by the peak of our proverbial mountain, but by the relative capacity of the climbers. Best is not a determined altitude, but by how far any individual can climb.
The climb is the curve. 100 feet and 100 percent mean nothing if not in relation to the students, our mountaineers. Up until this moment, students have been striving for the top. Enter law school, where students are taught to strive to topple each other. While it may sound cynical, a more useful piece of advice offered to law students ought not to be “do your best,” but “do better than the person in front of you.”
The curve indoctrinates a culture of comparison. Students, look to your left and look to your right, these people are your new best.
Sounds pretty cutthroat and insufferable, doesn’t it? And it would be, if we subscribed to this measure of achievement to define our self-worth. Your Happiness Guru is here to tell you to stop with the petty comparisons.
Comparing oneself to others is a surefire way to be miserable. In doing so, you’ll inevitably fabricate unattainable standards, mythical measures of greatness, and impossible expectations. If you look hard enough, and, in this crowd, if you hardly look – you will find someone “better” in some quantifiable way. This constant game of trying to one-up each other is both unproductive and exhausting.
There is nothing to gain, and so much to lose by getting wrapped up in the comparative curve competition. While it is admirable to be motivated, inspired, and uplifted by your stellar peers, it is an entirely different matter to use those peers as a yardstick of self-judgment and self-doubt. This is not indicative of your actual talents, skills, and aptitudes. It is or should be irrelevant to your sense of self-worth. Lastly, it isn’t all that useful.
Knowing where you “stand” lined up side by side with your fellow classmates can only give you one limited piece of information: where you stand in comparison. It does not tell you how to be better, and or why anyone else has improved or worsened. There’s very little use for such information outside the administrative sphere.
So, let go of the infamous curve and alleged “truths” it espouses. Stop with the “I’m better or I’m worse than X” narrative. It doesn’t get you or anyone else anywhere. The constant comparisons will only foster resentment for other people’s success, and provide a false sense of superiority drawn from your own success. Neither of which will lead to a genuine and stable state of happiness.
Instead, focus on your strengths (not weaknesses) and be grateful for all that you already have. Let go of the notion that there is a perfect student, the one who knows it all and has it all. This person doesn’t exist. It’s time to let go of perfection as a goal in and of itself, and replace it with a much healthier aspiration, such as self-improvement.
The culture of comparison cultivated by the curve can breed unrealistic ideals and an unhealthy practice of harsh self-reflection. Choose to unsubscribe, stop with the comparisons, and direct your efforts to cultivating a sense of worth completely independent of others.