Students with a teachable spirit will become more successful, regardless of where they start their journey. Do you believe that you have all the answers? Do you believe that your professor is a lousy teacher? I’ve seen it over and over again. Arrogant students who believe they know how to study and to take exams. But most of these students don’t do as well as they thought they would. They then blame the professor for bad exam questions, a forced curve that artificially kept their grade down, or poor grading by the profesor.
A few years ago I had a student who flunked one of my courses. The student took my course a second time, and once again flunked it, even though I used the same multiple choice questions from the prior exam. Rather than accepting personal responsibility, this student blamed me for flunking the final. You will never be as successful as you can be with this type of attitude. You need to develop a teachable spirit.
Suspend Your Disbelief
So here’s my recommendation: suspend your disbelief. Its hard, but once you start you will begin improving, whether you are at the top of your class or at the bottom.
This is how you do it. You hear something from an expert, like your professor, and the advice contradicts what you believe to be true. The professor may be giving you advice that is contrary to what some upperclassman has told you. This is when you need to suspend your disbelief and trust your professor. But, you say, this upperclassman got the highest grade in the class last semester. Or someone on the internet said they nailed law school, getting almost all A’s. Now, I don’t doubt that these students got top grades. But let’s think critically about the inference you are being asked to make. The argument goes something like this. I got all “A’s” and if you follow what I did then you will also get all “A’s.” But are you exactly like that upperclassman or the person you saw on YouTube? Do you have the same IQ, the same background, the same undergraduate GPA, the same experience? Did you have the same professors? Are your final exams similar to what that other person had?
There are many variables that go into someone getting the highest grade in a course, and it is possible that you share none of those variables with that top student. So take their anecdotal evidence with a grain of salt.
Not All Equal
Let’s look at one variable, for example. Some students come to law school with exceptionally strong technical writing skills. Those students overwhelmingly do better because they were trained to write better. They went a high school that taught technical writing, and then to a college with a strong emphasis on essay exams. (If you want to see what a law school final could look like, I have some writing prompts at my exam bank.)
Now I don’t know about your experience, but more and more students are going to law school without a strong writing background. This means that the advice you receive from these “A” students won’t work for you. Why? Because you are starting at different places. Imagine that you and your classmates are climbing a mountain. But you are not all starting at the bottom of the mountain. Some are starting at the bottom, some in the middle, and a few near the top. That is what law school is like, which is why some students hire tutors. After all, a tutor can help you move faster up that mountain, just like a personal trainer can help your body get in shape.
Undergraduate Majors
Another variable is undergraduate majors. I’ve noticed that philosophy majors tend to do well in law school because their philosophy courses emphasized the same critical reasoning skills needed to succeed in law school. If the person giving you advice was trained in philosophy, that person’s advice may not be of use to you. Again, you are both starting at a different point along the path to an “A.”
Briefing Cases
You may have heard from others that you should not brief your cases, which I is horrible advice–you should brief your cases. You now have a decision to make: do you believe those other people that gave you that bad advice, or a professor that has helped thousands of law students, and understands what it takes to succeed. Now, some people have succeeded without case briefing, but ask yourself, what knowledge, skills, and abilities did they bring with them to law school, and do you have the same knowledge, skills, and abilities?
To succeed in law school you need to suspend your disbelief and develop a teachable spirit. For additional info on why having a teachable spirit is important, check out this Harvard Business Review article. on humble leaders.
