Normally, while I'm walking in a constant square around the first floor trying to look important, I am doing one of three things:

1) Scoping babes.

2) Yelling bro greetings to people like they're my best friends when in fact I've met them only once, and then receiving awkward responses as they struggle to remember my name. This exercise is designed to show passers-by how awesome I am, in that I appear to have friends.

3) Wondering how the hell it is even humanly possible that the unisex bathroom on the first floor is always occupied. I mean, seriously. Maybe some of those students in my section that nobody's ever seen actually live in there. Or is it Diane Nafranowicz's secret lair? Fear not, gentle reader, I'll get to the bottom of that. But I digress.

Anyway, on this morning, the atmosphere of non-sexual tension was so strong that even I had to stop on my usual meanderings through the hallowed halls.

"Hi Fauntleroy!" I yelled to my best 1L chum. "What's up!"

"Ohhhhhhh.....hey........man. Not much, what's up with you?"

"So I know these passing interchanges in the hallway are done entirely as a status symbol to make you feel good about knowing so many people (YEAH!), but can I ask you something? Why is everyone so glum? Did people find out about Dean Caminker's toupée?"

"What??"

"Never mind."

"No...um...dude, we just got our grades back."

Astonishingly, everybody was not able to squeeze into the top 10% of the curve, this despite the massive amount of food, sleep, and hygiene that had been forsaken in the interest of cramming in as much work as possible. (For better advice on putting lots of things in a small, confined area, see Rooks' sex column.)

I am always reluctant to mingle among the commoners; it is well known that many will give you dropsy or the shingles. Rather than dealing with each tearful 1L individually and then making out with a Purell dispenser for a week, I figured it best to dispense advice through a technology with a much brighter future ahead of it, viz. newsprint.
Many 1Ls are rightly concerned for their future. Having received an A-, they know that somehow this series of pixels on a screen will unleash a Rube Goldberg machine of tragedy and destruction on the rest of their previously awesome-looking life as a drone in a firm. They won't get that bitchin' internship at Toys 'R' Us (Office of General Counsel), then they won't get a good job, then they will become infertile and ultimately die a lonely and horrible death watching Three's Company reruns. Well, I'm here to tell you, bottom 90% - there's no way that's your future.

It will be far worse.

Law school wastes no time in weeding out the examinationally inadequate. Sure, it starts innocently enough; the tight-lipped smiles from friends, the knowing glances between assholes who think they got better grades than you, the meaningless Hallmark sentiments regarding how unimportant grades are. "They're just letters," they coo consolingly. They are just letters. And D stands for dead, C for corpse, and B for blow to the head (possibly fatal). A stands for alive (for now).

I know that Dean Z and her ilk would prefer I not mention it, but if you have below a 3.9, your days are numbered. While everyone else is caught up in post-exam euphoria at the end of this semester, Deans Baum and Gregory will finally clear up what their utterly nebulous responsibilities are, don black balaclavas and disappear into the streets of Ann Arbor. Then they will dance like their hearts are on fire, like no one is watching. After a crazy night of clubbing, they will return to the law school and find you crying on your Hello Kitty pillow.

A few random, comforting UM-DPS CRIME ALERT e-mails will pepper people's inboxes, but will be quickly deleted after readers realize nobody randomly exposed themselves to someone else in self-defense. In the fall, if people even remember your name (should have yelled bro greetings in the hall a little more often, sucka), Dean Z will explain gently that you transferred to a nice sunny law school where you have lots of space to run around and play with other law students.

Sorry 1Ls, you should have gone to business school or something else that doesn't matter. In the meantime, remember: if people here are studying and stressing like grades are a matter of life and death, there's a good reason for that. A very good reason.

Zach will be transferring to Florida Coastal School of Law next year. He can be reached, providing no other grades are released, at rg@umich.edu.