Mike - by the numbers

Numbers are always fun to play with, since the only number in our checkbook is 0, here are others that are much funner to play with:

696 - Days until graduation from law school. Did anyone notice that we flipped into the 600's? It looks better than the 800's. It's nice to be able to say he's finished his first year of law school. Makes it seem like it's going fast. (which it is)

87.6 - His average grade for his first year of school. That puts him into the top 20% of his class. I guess all that studying and being gone for 2 weeks paid off. :)

• To put that into perspective: In a regular undergrad program, your score is based on how many correct answers you get. For instance, if you get 85 out of 100 correct, you get an 85%, or B. In law school's first year classes, it's scored differently. First, you're scored based on how many of the issues that the professor thought you should've gotten. Often, the best students get less than half of the points. (And that's after a 3 hour 13 page answer) Then that score is compared to the rest of the class. (graded on the curve). Depending on the grade distribution of the class, in general, only 5 people will get between 90-99 and anther 3-5 students will get between 86-89. About 35% of the class will score between 80-85 with the remainder scoring between 70-79. If you score below 70, you worry about what went wrong. If you score under 65 (very few do) you get to take the class over again. For instance, for Mike's mid-term Property class, the grade distribution was so tight that the difference between the #6 score in the class and the #45 (bottom 10%) was three points. It was really close. In an undergrad program, they all would've gotten between an 86 and 91, but in law school, 5 get 99-90, 5 get 86-89, 15-18 get 80-85, 20+ get 75-79, and the remainder get 70-74. Basically, you're not trying to "ACE" the exam as much as you're trying to outperform all your classmates. No one "ACES" the test.

3 - The number of internships he is working on this summer.

• City of Springfield Code Enforcement. He works in the courts to ensure that the codes of the city are kept.
• Working for Attornery Elizabeth Dougal doing odd projects, mostly dealing with trusts and wealth transfer/wealth preservation.
• As a CASA volunteer. He is appointed as a child advocate (similar to a guardian ad-litem) and serves as a representative of the court in seeking out the best interest of the child. This is not a summer internship, but a continuously running activity that he will do until he decides to not do it anymore.

32 - The average number of hours he is scheduled at Home Depot working in their window and millwork department. (Selling, you guessed it, windows, doors and moulding. Wonder why they put him there?)