Week Twelve, Part 8 - ‘A’ Wish

On Saturday it snows hard, and the wind picks up. Out the back window, I can see branches of our blue spruce swaying back and forth.

The house is quiet though. Terri works in the basement, churning out sale proposals for AT&T. Stephie and Lauren are gone for weekend visitation. There’s not even a football game to distract me, as the Irish have a bye week.

In the morning I brief my cases for Monday, then study Legal Research all afternoon. The final exam – our first – is on Thursday. Notre Dame profs are stingy graders, I've heard, and this news worries me. Since kindergarten, I’ve been on the right edge of the bell curve and want to keep it that way.

I sit on the floor with my back against the leather couch. On the coffee table in front of me, I spread out my notes and the supplemental texts. To the right is a laptop. I review my notes from Dean Roger Jacobs on the six types of secondary sources. Do I need to know that CJS stands for Corpus Juris Secundum or that the Kresge Law Library subscribes to 700 periodicals and indexes? Doubt it, but I tuck the factoids away just in case.

Patti Ogden’s comment on the last day of class rings in my head: “There's no denying that some of you will score higher than others.”

I want A’s. Only A’s. “The golden apples of the sun,” to borrow a line from Yeats.

Like it or not, grades reflect a student’s intellectual ability and academic quality. I’ve always had this belief. It makes me study and fuels my acute dislike for low marks. And, I admit, throughout high school and college, grades were more important to me than what I learned. By far.

I break for supper, then study another two hours.

Suddenly the power goes off and the house darkens. The storm must have toppled some power lines. My laptop, now on battery, glows like a radar screen. An hour later, however, it too is out of juice.

Terri joins me in the living room. The house is getting cold. I move our biggest candle to the coffee table and page through Dworsky’s User’s Guide to the Bluebook. Like a young Abe Lincoln, I study law by the flickering light.

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