The Panic

Anyone who has attended law school for more than a couple of months is familiar with The Panic. It sets in about 8 weeks into the semester, and you can tell its obvious affects in the furrowed brows and colossal bar tabs of your fellow students. Simply put, The Panic is the law student's instinctual response to the impending doom of the finals season. Finals in law school are inherently competitive, as in there are only so many A's, etc. that each professor is even ALLOWED to give to their students (unless you go to one of those snooty schools like Harvard that are simply too good for letter grades). Which means that law students know that they must not only know everything necessary to pass the class, but they must also know just enough more than the person next to them. As the saying goes, in the zombie apocalypse, you don't have to be the fastest runner, you just have to run faster than the other guy.

The problem is that grades in law school are everything. Any law firm worth their salt is never going to look past your 1.5 GPA, regardless of how many boards of humanitarian groups you may chair. Experience means almost nothing. Grades are everything. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I rather enjoy my view from atop the law school bell curve, because it's worth it for my blood pressure and general sanity to not delve into the 9 circles of manic-depressive hell that so many students descend. But, as scary as The Panic may be, hilarity does ensue.

Every law student has a story about their experience with The Panic. Either personally, or through a friend, The Panic beats out any common cold in terms of law school pandemics. Everyone knows that guy that hordes his ADD meds throughout the entire term, then cokes out on a triple-dose for the last month, sleeping 4 hours a night and generally being the worlds most annoying conversationalist while he rubs his gums and itches his neck. Others know of that one girl that had a nervous breakdown in the middle of the library, sprawled out her books and gave into the tears. Still others hear horror stories of that guy that walked around the stacks with an industrial magnet, wiping clean the hard-drives of unsuspecting students. The stories go on and on, but there's always one common denominator: stress. A whole lot is heaped on a lot of people that have absolutely no clue how to handle it, and the results are spectacular.

Surviving The Panic requires one of two approaches. First, one may separate themself from the area directly affected by The Panic, thus preventing infection. People who chose this method typically avoid much of the fallout. This is my preferred method. It lowers your chances of infection, but the lack of life-threatening motivation can damage one's grade point average. However, simply removing yourself from the location won't solve the trick, as many can contract The Panic through independent means, but it just takes longer to find your body if you're in your own apartment. A second method, one adopted by most students, is distraction. Whether it be all-night benders, property destruction or meaningless, stress-relieving sex, distractions can take on many forms to remove one's psyche from the law school equation. While those that pursue this method are most likely to suffer from long-term side effects (and no, that's not just a rash), they are typically the most fun to observe. These are the primary methods used to combat The Panic in modern day law school.

But then again, of course, there's always another option: Get up to get down with the sickness, and embrace the madness...