in defense of the gunners

First, I have to confess I’m still not precisely sure what a gunner is. I’ve heard the term used to refer to students who fit in all of these categories:

1) students who raise their hands frequently, but don’t really make good points
2) students who raise their hands frequently and make good points
3) students who study a lot
4) students who have any sort of clear career ambition (a big law firm, a judicial clerkship, public interest law etc.) and are taking steps to reach those goals
5) students who manifest some combination of items 1-4.

Regardless of what the actual definition of a gunner is, it’s clear that gunners are the lepers of law school. Calling somebody a gunner is a terrible insult.

I like most of my fellow students. I’ve developed a friendship or at least a passing acquaintance with a lot of them. They’re smart, funny, and willing to help their fellow students.

There is, however, a small group of students that I prefer to avoid, and they aren’t the gunners.

These students rarely raise a hand in class. If they do raise a hand in class, it’s generally to offer an unfunny and weirdly cynical observation about the case. They are excessively concerned about what their fellow law students think of them. They whine. They complain about the competitiveness of other students, but then spend an enormous amount of time criticizing other students and examining their own positions in the law school social hierarchy. They derisively use the word ‘gunner’ in the hallways. They strike me as vacuous.

Gunners are many things, but they are not vacuous. Sure, sometimes they are socially incompetent. Sure, at times they’re irritating. And yes, I’ll blog about them because they can be unintentionally hilarious.

But the gunners have passion. They may not know how to express themselves well, but there is joy in what they do. They love the reading, they often are the ones who work in the free clinics, and they want to change the world or at least themselves. They are driven, they have goals, and they work hard. They care. I can tell you that I’d rather be stuck on a desert island with a gunner than one of the other group any day.

Social ineptitude eventually falls away. But passion, that’s hard to learn and harder to keep.