39 Months Post-Op...First Big, Fat, Nosedive off the Wagon, Binge...also Possible just Flunked out of Law School

[Moogle 116]

Law school is awful. I put my husband through. He graduated in the top 5% of his undergraduate class and struggled with his grades in law school. The not being able to work thing almost killed us. I was working a crap retail job that really didn't pay enough. He didn't get any scholarships and now has $150k in student loan debt because we took every cent possible to make sure we had a roof over our head (seriously, DC area is freaking expensive - my paycheck didn't even cover our rent). When he got out, it was right in the middle of this last recession and no jobs were available. He interned with all the public-interest groups who were all in hiring freezes. The situation is pretty bad when you go to a tier I school with no employment prospects afterwards. All the people who got hired when they graduated had family firms and connections, which we had none of. When the freezes ended, they only wanted people fresh out of school. It really didn't prepare him for anything afterwards at all. He does criminal defense and he had to learn pretty much everything. Like right now, he just started a new firm and is learning the civil sides because trying to get people to pay their bills is nearly impossible sometimes. I'm just glad his stuff is doing well enough so that I can go to school full-time and not work, especially since my college is tough (it's an honor's college).

The kicker is, his school keeps begging us for money. We haven't even started paying his loans back. And the fact that they changed their name to "honor" one of the biggest disgraces to the legal profession (and Supreme Court - sorry to get political, but yeah, not happy about that name change) means they can go well.. uh.. yeah. If they had the money to do that, then they don't need the money we don't have.

Relax, breathe, relax. Drink a glass of wine (if that's your thing). Don't go overboard: law school almost made my husband an alcoholic.

Yes, an F can be catastrophic. But it sounds like you've done pretty well other than that class. Fingers crossed for you that it pulls you up over that hump. If they try to kick you out or pull your stuff, appeal it. Explain your situation: your life, stress / mental health factors, etc. They might have programs to help with that (my husband's law school did).

I have to keep a 3.0 to keep my scholarships and get into the graduate program I want to do. The pressure is on there. I feel ya. I couldn't afford to stay in school if it weren't for my scholarships.

Oh, and the way classes are graded are terrible. I remember his grades being determined 100% by the final exam. Nothing else mattered except that exam.

[woo woo 872]

@@Moogle exactly! I went to tier 1 and I know many that were never able to really get anything going with law after. And even the ones that did get the big deal firm jobs hate it.

Law school is interesting and intellectually exciting/challenging, but the only thing it prepares you for it a career in law, which ain't all that great.

I only had a mid term exam one time and it was not one of the first year classes, it was con crim pro. We always just had the one exam.

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[glitter eyes 1,398]

You have gotten a lot of good advice. I just want to send you a virtual hug!! I know from all your past posts and successes that you will find a way to overcome this obstacle too and conquer what you want in life. You are already so successful.

Don't worry about the food binge (not that you ate a lot of unhealthy things) I know you have been a goal for quite a while and one stress eating night won't derail you.

I know you will pick yourself up, shake this off and move on to the achievements you want!! I am rooting for you!

Keep us posted.

[AvaFern 3,516]

@Moogle @@woo woo

They added midterms to our school because too many people just flat out failed the finals, lol. Our midterms are such a tiny portion of the grade though that in the end it's still all about the final. The class I failed was the one that had the heaviest weight on the final at a 70%, so I guess the fact that I had a solid B with the curve on the midterm didn't matter. Thanks to my A- in the only other class that posted, I'm still technically beneath the acceptable curve, but hopefully the other grades help cancel out the F to the point I don't get kicked out, but who knows...I thought I did well in Contracts and apparently I got an F. Outside of the fact that now I will likely have to repeat that class, I'm pretty sure it will screw me out of my scholarship at the very least.

I really only went to law school at this point in life because it was free. I've wanted to be a lawyer since I was a kid, but at some point I just accepted that I could either pay my mortgage or go to law school. Having free tuition was like winning the lottery and now...I have one semester of law school, and if I don't pay for the next 2.5 years, I'm forever the person that flunked out of law school.

I never thought at a Tier IV school, when I got into Tier I based pretty much entirely on my LSAT that I would suck so much I'd possibly get kicked out my first semester. The waiting for the other grades to post is killing me....it's like being executed, except that every time you step into the noose it starts snowing and they call a snow day and send you back to your cell. Ok yes, dramatic a bit, but ugh.

Everytime I read through all of these postings I feel so much better. It is really nice to have such kind and supportive people who have never me and don't know me take the time to help a stranger feel less like a complete loser. Thank-you all.

[Nymea 87]

Wow what an amazing story. Your life sounds exhausting and impossibly full. Thank you for sharing it.

You know what stood out to me the most in the whole thing? Not that you went to the store and bought things you will regret sooner or later but that you WALKED there. I don't know your situation or whether you walked to the store when you were at your heaviest but for me the idea of walking anywhere was not on my radar for a good few years. Now I am loving walking again.

I don't suppose walking to the gas station burned enough calories to cover the ice cream sandwich ... but I don't think one slip is going to make a difference in the long run.

Others have provided some great advice which I can't really add to so I will just say I hope things turn out right for you and thank you for sharing

Please let us know what your other grades are when they are posted. I for one would really love to know. I am rooting for you to survive this and be able to continue on with your scholarship

Edited December 19, 2016 by Nymea

[FrankyG 1,450]

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned, but is it possible that the F in that class is a mistake? I can't help but think that it may be, and it surely wouldn't hurt to ask at this point. If someone was doing the grading by hand, it would be VERY easy to get things muddled if there were lots of students needing grading...

So sorry no matter how it shakes out because it sucks to get a awful surprise/disappointment like that.

[AvaFern 3,516]

@@FrankiesGirl

I am SO hoping it was a mistake! The problem is though that in law school all of your grades are done with a special anonymous number. You can't ask any of your professors about your grades until they have all posted because it risks the anonymity of your stupid special number. You can also get an F automatically if you put your name on the test (which I am 99% sure I didn't do, but who knows), if you fill out the stupid bubble part wrong on the multiple choice part, and for a few other random dumb things, which I think you can dispute. I haven't had less than a B on anything, and I had As and Bs on midterms- I just can't understand how I did so badly as to be at the bottom 5% of the class which is the only time you get an F in Contracts- which was a class I thought I knew fairly well. So...I have to wait until the end of the week when all of the other scores post until I can find out what happened, and then it will be Christmas, so hopefully after the holiday, this time next week I will actually be able to talk to the professor. Of course nothing else has posted yet today, given I have been obsessively checking it, so I get to spend god knows how much of the next week finding out if I only suck at one class, or if I blew any others too. At least though I know it was nothing personal. Between the anonymous grading and the fact that this professor didn't even know I was in his class (I asked him about next semester during another final and he was shocked I was his student, lol), I'm trying to convince myself I'm just a random number and somewhere something got messed up. Unlikely, but one can pray.

@@Nymea

Don't be too impressed with my walking, lol. I took half a xanax to quell my hysterical sobbing long enough to finish working after I saw the grade and I didn't want to risk driving. The gas station isn't too far from my house, and I figured the cold air might make me feel better. Mostly it just made me cold, but at least I burned off maybe a bite or two of the ice cream,haha.

[Tootsietoes 84]

I went through a phase where I had to eat a Peanut Butter Twix every single day at work, I knew I had a problem when I had 2 in a day and I got sick of them and quit ( and rather the vending machine stopped stocking it). Pace yourself, stop beating yourself up about it and move on. Don't try eating all that in a day though, sheesh.

[Miss Impala 64]

Girl... prayers are with you on your remaining classes. Sometimes we have wake up calls that make us learn that what we are doing is not working. Or that our confidence let us down.

And I totally understand the need to punish yourself with something that used to be your self medication of choice. You will thru this, because you ARE smart! Hugs and positive thoughts coming at ya. You will find a way to recover, but it may take some hard choices of getting rid of an 80 hr week and a mortgage etc...

You have learned to live on less physically for your health, now got may need to learn on how to live on less to attain the particular degree you want.

And I agree, I am paying someone to teach me, not pass judgements on how many hours I work in a week, nor use it to actually bully me my affecting grades you earned and paid for.

You got this! You will rebound!

11/11/16: HW 380

11/28/16: Duodenal Switch Surgery

11/28/16: SW 374 lbs

12/19/16: CW 346 lbs

[KeepCalm 223]

Everyone else has said pretty much what I would in some context or another... so I'm just gonna offer a hug and hope that your week goes better.

I know how you feel about the F - I'm rather upset with myself too atm - I missed the first test and assignment because I wasn't able to purchase my book and teacher doesn't have make ups. I made A's and Bs on my other three assignments and Bs on the last three tests... and have walked away with a 68 because of the missed test and assignment hoping I can fix it, somehow...

[Aggiemae 739]

Holy crap! Next time I think I am having a shifty day ill read your post... hope you come back after you have slept off all that gas station food and what ever you washed it down with.

I was definitely in survival mode thru much of grad school. In professions where the professors are also practicing in the same field there is definitely a tendency for the instructors to "eat their young", and this was before all the "accommodations" for "handicaps" like "anxiety disorder" and "attention deficits"...

I can't imagine working full time with a full time law school load. Is academic probation a possibility? Or get a not from your doctor about your anxiety "disorder".

Good luck.

[sill21 69]

I'm a 1L at a school that cost $45K a year and have a scholarship and my contracts professor was the biggest asshole. I was reading this like hm? Is this a classmate?

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[Heather I 500]

Any updates on if the F was a mistake? Your other grades/scholarship enough to keep going? Anxious for you and hoping for the best!

[AvaFern 3,516]

@@Heather I

Thank-you for asking! We still aren't at a point where we can review the final exams, but all of my other grades were high, so I am not getting kicked out of law school! I might end up on academic probation if that F stands, lol, but when my last 3 grades finally posted I was well over the academic dismissal GPA, thank God. I have no idea what happened, and I spent most of Christmas freaking out about it, since they oh-so-kindly didn't post our last grade until the 27th, but in the end, the other grades balanced out the bad one. Fortunately, merit scholarships are apparently reviewed annually, so if I do ok next semester, I should be ok there too. I'm still hopeful the F is a mistake, but they are really careful with grades so I think that is being too optimistic.

Hope you had a nice holiday!

[CStoned 155]

I just bought all of this, in one trip, at a gas station, and I planned to eat every bit of it.

food.jpg

So, I did everything right. I've worked 60-80-120 plus hour work weeks for over a decade, and before that, slightly less, as I was still a child. I have two successful businesses, multiple degrees, and this fall I got a full scholarship to law school. Ever since I was a kid, all I wanted to do was go to law school, but since I've been entirely on my own since I was 18, clearly that was never happening. I spent almost all of my 20's working super hard and yo-yo dieting, until I was so fat I had to have 80% of my stomach cut out. I then spent 18 months getting to goal weight, spent a year going through plastics surgery, and then finally, I felt like maybe I could really go after a dream for once. Since all I did was work, I didn't get to have a husband or kids, but hey no big deal, I was smart, I could do other things. So, I applied to law school, did decent on my LSATs, and got a full scholarship. I was so happy.

Then I got to spend the last 4 months getting 2-3 hours of sleep a night, because oh right, one does not get to work 80 hour weeks, when 40 of the hours that used to be available for work are now forced to be spent in a law school building because your classes are scheduled just far apart that you can't go home and you get to sit in the library and work. Also, thanks to traffic, and my fantastic forced 1L schedule I get to sit in traffic an hour to 90 minutes a day both ways. But hey, when you've got dreams, you can handle going to bed at 3am and getting up at 5:30am, you can sit in classes and try to learn what everyone else gets to spend literally their entire day learning, and then you can go home, work your ass off for 12 hours so that you can still pay your mortgage, because right, you're not a child, and you don't have a spouse, so the only person paying your bills is you. The only person you ever get to count on is you. And so, while everyone in law school full time has literally the only job of learning this crap, and no one even has a part time job, which,...not joking, there is an American Bar Association rule that you can't work more than 20 hours a week, and if they find out they start deducting your grades until you're at part-time, starting of course with your highest grade. Class elitism much? We wonder why there is such a huge class separation in our country and then we see the fact that law school, all law schools in the country ban their students from working. HOW IS THAT LEGAL?! So, back to the "all about me" story. I'm also working on an MBA, which isn't terribly difficult since I have other graduate degrees, but when your law school will actually kick you out if you work more than 20 hours a week, you can't say..."oh I'm sorry, I had to work more hours than most of you idiots are even awake this week" when you don't do great.

But I didn't do badly...I got A's and B's on all my midterms, without studying, because I'm supposed to be smart right? I booked the property midterm, and I thought I was golden. Well, 2 of my final 5 grades just posted and I got a f****ing F in my contracts class. AN F. Never in my entire life have I gotten an F. I've been first in almost every class I've been in for almost a decade. I thought I knew contracts...clearly I did so freaking horribly that I got an F. The fact that a girl with accomodations, who gets 4.5 hours to take a 3 hour test got an A, oh well hey cool, the law allows her to cheat. Several others have the same accomodations, which when law schools have mandatory curves, their high grades, knock down my grades. I resent the hell out of that, it is absolute bullshit, and the more I think about it, the madder I get. I have the exact same diagnosis that she has, but I decided that I was going to pass law school without cheating...clearly that worked out well for me. I got an F, in a 1L doctrinal class, which not only tanks my GPA for the entirety of law school, but now I need to re-take the class, which is the absolute best case scenario, or if my other grades suck, then I fail out of law school, not to mention the fact that my school is $45K a year and if I don't have a 2.0 GPA it's revoked. My other grade was an A-, which doesn't even balance out my F. I have 3 more grades to post, and if I don't have at least a B or C in all of them, I just failed out of law school. I will be the absolute laughingstock of the world. I have had more career success than almost everyone I know, and yet, I possibly just flunked out of law school because I can either pay my bills and suck at school, or I can be homeless and have the time everyone else does to do well. I don't get to rely on anyone else...it is ALWAYS on me and for the first time in a very long time, I have possibly failed at life and because I am feeling narcisistic at the moment, I am absolutely convinced that everyone is going to be highly amused that I failed. Oh, how far it is too fall. Man, I'm whiny.

So...I will leave out the pharmaceuticals I first enjoyed, but I then walked to the gas station and bought $25 worth of stuff that will make me feel better. Peanut Butter cups, ice cream, chocolate shake, twix, butterfinger....all the things that used to make it so much less hurtful that I was a worthless loser. So far I ate the ice cream sandwich and I already feel like puking. I'm pretty sure I'm going to go to bed, wake up, and throw all of that stuff out.

I suppose the lesson here is that 3 years ago, I would have eaten every bit of that while crying myself to sleep, and yet 3 years ago I would never have even been in law school because I wouldn't have thought the fat girl had any business being anywhere other than on a treadmill. Now, I want to barf up my ice cream sandwich because apparently milk, chocolate, and Cookies are still on the list of things that make me sick, and even while buying all that crap, there wasn't the same old, feeling, like I was bringing my chocolate-food-friends home for dinner. The more I write, the more I have no desire to go eat anything else. Also, much as I tend to take the side of people who fall off the wagon, because I have my fair share of Starbucks mini scones and sometimes a few bites of sweets (and I thumb my nose at a lot of the rules), around Christmas is really the only time I eat sugary baked stuff because it makes me gain weight quickly, and makes me insanely sick. The last two Christmases I've had almost none of the sweets I'm allowed, and I haven't really missed them. Maybe that's a good indicator for anyone who is considering surgery...you really do stop using food as a crutch, as a friend, as an old reliable companion, even if sometimes you go spend $25 at a gas station in the middle of the night on all kinds of crap that you're probably not going to eat.

So, since I need to retain my calm, cool, reserved, never worried about anything reputation with my friends, you all get subjected to the hot mess I am right now.

I think I'm going to go drink Scotch. Or Tequila. Or both.

For the record though, this is why I try not to judge the bad decisions of others...I make all too many supremely crap choices myself.

You doing too much woman!

Throw away that junk

Kick back & under-achieve just a lil bit. I don't have multiple degrees but I makes SURE I take a moment to under-achieve for abt 30 mins every day & look how damn happy I am girl!

- seeeeee???