After a full semester of intense work and endless complaints, I finally get some reward for it all. However, I’m hesitant to say “hard work pays off.” It does, for sure, but not always in the way that you want it to be. The lessons I learned freshman year will stay in my mind forever. It’s not enough to just try hard and give it all you have, to succeed, you actually have to know your limits. Sure, it’s great to test your limits and stretch it a little especially when you are still growing. But like creating a good investment portfolio, you have you have to know how to balance the risks. The best results, or the greatest success, come from a combination of hard work, gamesmanship, and luck. To disregard any one of them is to be blind to some parts of reality. These are the lessons Duke has taught me so far, and I plan to take them with me to law school and beyond.

P.S. I have finally recovered to the GPA I started out with (and a little above), but I don’t think it’s possible to graduate cum anything. Oh well At least I’ll have 1-2 honor’s thesis(es)…