A Note on the Competitive Nature of Law School

I am decidedly not competitive when it comes to academic enterprises. I have never derived any satisfaction from a grade. It isn't that I believe grades are arbitrary, they rarely are arbitrary. I just don't get off on it. I especially don't get off on knowing I got a better grade than someone else.
Some people do.

I chose a law school where the bulk of the population had been working for a couple of years. I figured that anyone who placed a great deal of value in academic achievement would have that instinct destroyed by two years (or more) in the work force. There was still a small contingent of "gunners." Gunners have their hand raised to answer rhetorical questions. They research the cases in the textbook to become familiar with each case's procedural history. They impress themselves and nobody else.

A friend from law school is about to start teaching a class at our alma mater and he relayed a tidbit to me. On December 25 he received an e-mail from a student who was registered to be in his seminar during the spring semester. The student wanted to know if there was any reading he could do in advance of the seminar. My friend, the teacher, hated gunners passionately during our legal education and the unknowing questioner had tainted himself irreparably. My friend, the teacher, undoubtedly thought, "What kind of competitive prick is e-mailing me on Christmas to get some worthless perceived edge over another student?"

I think, "How sad that this undoubtedly awkward social outcast has nothing better to do during winter break than to try and get some worthless perceived edge over another student."

I imagine that this is the student who asks other students what grades they got, which journal has accepted them, what their LSAT score was, and which firms have called them back. This is the student who opens his grades in front of the other students and gloats, failing to realize that those other students don't care what he/she got in Contracts and that their excitement and subsequent call to their parents reveals a level of immaturity that attracts the scorn of everyone else, including my friend, the teacher.

There is no negative ramification for being the gunner. They will be as successful for those first few years after graduation as anyone else. But they are secretly hated. In study group, the gunner's name is mentioned and resounding boos drown out the name until it is never spoken again.