i asked my students to talk with me about the architecture of the educational space harvard law school crafts for them. i am going to start posting interesting responses. here’s one:
I actually believe that having more classes pass/fail at Harvard Law School
would greatly help students learn and appreciate the law. Personally, I found
that taking a year off and working between undergrad and law school taught me
to put things in perspective, and realize that grades weren’t the end-all,
be-all. As such, I thought I was able to approach my classes, especially 1L
year, with a much more level head than many of my classmates who went straight
through without working. I’d watch friends stress out and panic months before
exams were even mentioned, straining to memorize every miniscule detail of each
case, and fail to grasp the bigger picture of what the purpose or essence of the
area of law was about. I found that my ability to emphasize the nature of the
law rather than get caught up in insignifica actually allowed me to perform far
superior in exams and understand the material to a fuller degree,than if I took
the classes as merely preparing myself to score high on an exam. For those
students who did not have the advantage of working and garnering a different
perspective on the importance of grades, having more classes pass-fail would
allow them not to fall into the trap of obsessing over grades and not getting
what they should of their law school experience.