I am a 2nd Year law student at one of the tier 1s, and will be in third year in less than two months. Less has changed since I joined. I feel minimal improvement in my knowledge and understanding of the law than what it was on day one, my reading capabilities feel somewhat better, but no such change in my writing skills.
On the other hand, I can witnessed people around me get noticeably better. I saw people get published at increasingly better places, winning increasingly better competition. It's not like I have not tried, I have. I don't know what to blame it on, so I have decided to put it on inherent lack of capability/intelligence in me. It makes sense too. I can from reservation, where my general batchmates ha to get an under 100 rank, mine was around 700. That too after multiple attempts. Logically, that makes me 7 times worse at everything law school than them. 7 times worse English skills, 7 time worse comprehension, 7 times worse retention capacity, 7 times worse writing ability, 7 times worse conversation and speaking skills, and so on. I have tried very hard and things don't seem to get better. My GPA keeps tanking every semester no matter what i do, and I'm never satisfied with the amount of work I put in. It's cyclic in a way i believe, where capable people upon getting more positive feedback from their endeavours get further motivated to do something even better, whereas i, on consistent failure, find it impossible to even gather enough courage to start, try a new thing. I don't know what to do, and if things continue the way they are, I'm afraid i won't be employed. I have loans to pay and a family to feed (papa retires in 2 years), so not sure how that'll turn out. Rant over.
Don't get caught in this self esteem issue loop. Questioning your competence this much will also fuck up your performance. Instead of blaming it on your competence, try to think if your general approach to studies and co curriculars is wrong. 2nd year it too early to torment yourself like this. While you cannot just sit on it, it's better that you start analysing and creating new strategies. You cannot expect to grow at the same pace as everyone. That's irrespective of your ranking in CLAT. Just be better than who you were yesterday and it'll compound before you even realise it. Good luck!
brother CLAT is not an accurate estimation of your reading and comprehension skill. end of the day if your main goal is to securing a job work towards it, start doing internships and try to improve your grades.
But more than this, I want to highlight that - as a soon-to-graduate senior from NALSAR, I can confirm that I've seen far too many famed over-achievers come to nalsar from reserved category admissions, across batches. In fact, it's widely acknowledged that CLAT is an imperfect test that primarily evaluates your grasp of English and (supposedly) logical reasoning — but someone with enough money and social capital would come from a far better schooling and get far better coaching than their peers. This would, and indeed does, enable the privileged aspirants to game the system and thereby get a better score — in reality, a majority of the people from unreserved category at NLS/NALSAR/NUJS come from certain privilege. I can attest to this for Nalsar, particularly after the pattern changes etc. So, their CLAT rank is very likely not a reflection of "inherent intelligence", but rather firstly of privilege (of better schooling, coaching, having knowledgeable people guide you, likely money etc), and then merit.
Moral of the story? Don't take CLAT ranks to your heart. Once you're in the college, they're irrelevant.
On the other hand, in my humble opinion, what you've described in your struggles could be because of a plethora of reasons, ranging from (i) possible limited access to the best schools, whereas your general category friends from Delhi-Bombay very probably did, and that changes everything from how confident you feel to how much "new" efforts you need to put for exams due to how used to "faffing" you are, which practically gives most of the marks in law school; (ii) possible limited access to as good an amount of competitions promoting overall development and English proficiency as your peers likely did, and (iii) maybe you aren't as outgoing and befriending as some of your overconfident general category peers, who might be getting the simple advantage of asking the right seniors about notes, advice, and help etc.
I could be wrong about some of those inferences about you, but in general, most of such reasons as applicable to you are - crucially - not about "inherent" intelligence, but rather stemming from the fact that perhaps you weren't on a level-playing field as the people you want to compete with. That's understandable, and alright — but what you must do, is shift the focus from questioning any "inherent intelligence" and get into the groove of putting efforts to level your own playing field. In that light, a lot of the "inherently intelligent" people do not become great lawyers; it's far more about "capability" of putting the hard work in a smart manner that helps those working above you — which can only be developed, in due time. Your internships are intended to test this capability, and yes, smartness can help, but ultimately, almost everyone would be far more likely to give job offers to a very hard-working person with baseline smartness, rather than a smart but lazy intern.
So, buckle up. Everything's fine. The roadmap can be found in the comment I've attached. This comment should be enough motivation and clarification for the other concerns. The rest is in your hands :)
On the other hand, I can witnessed people around me get noticeably better. I saw people get published at increasingly better places, winning increasingly better competition. It's not like I have not tried, I have. I don't know what to blame it on, so I have decided to put it on inherent lack of capability/intelligence in me. It makes sense too. I can from reservation, where my general batchmates ha to get an under 100 rank, mine was around 700. That too after multiple attempts. Logically, that makes me 7 times worse at everything law school than them. 7 times worse English skills, 7 time worse comprehension, 7 times worse retention capacity, 7 times worse writing ability, 7 times worse conversation and speaking skills, and so on. I have tried very hard and things don't seem to get better. My GPA keeps tanking every semester no matter what i do, and I'm never satisfied with the amount of work I put in. It's cyclic in a way i believe, where capable people upon getting more positive feedback from their endeavours get further motivated to do something even better, whereas i, on consistent failure, find it impossible to even gather enough courage to start, try a new thing. I don't know what to do, and if things continue the way they are, I'm afraid i won't be employed. I have loans to pay and a family to feed (papa retires in 2 years), so not sure how that'll turn out. Rant over.
But more than this, I want to highlight that - as a soon-to-graduate senior from NALSAR, I can confirm that I've seen far too many famed over-achievers come to nalsar from reserved category admissions, across batches. In fact, it's widely acknowledged that CLAT is an imperfect test that primarily evaluates your grasp of English and (supposedly) logical reasoning — but someone with enough money and social capital would come from a far better schooling and get far better coaching than their peers. This would, and indeed does, enable the privileged aspirants to game the system and thereby get a better score — in reality, a majority of the people from unreserved category at NLS/NALSAR/NUJS come from certain privilege. I can attest to this for Nalsar, particularly after the pattern changes etc. So, their CLAT rank is very likely not a reflection of "inherent intelligence", but rather firstly of privilege (of better schooling, coaching, having knowledgeable people guide you, likely money etc), and then merit.
Moral of the story? Don't take CLAT ranks to your heart. Once you're in the college, they're irrelevant.
On the other hand, in my humble opinion, what you've described in your struggles could be because of a plethora of reasons, ranging from (i) possible limited access to the best schools, whereas your general category friends from Delhi-Bombay very probably did, and that changes everything from how confident you feel to how much "new" efforts you need to put for exams due to how used to "faffing" you are, which practically gives most of the marks in law school; (ii) possible limited access to as good an amount of competitions promoting overall development and English proficiency as your peers likely did, and (iii) maybe you aren't as outgoing and befriending as some of your overconfident general category peers, who might be getting the simple advantage of asking the right seniors about notes, advice, and help etc.
I could be wrong about some of those inferences about you, but in general, most of such reasons as applicable to you are - crucially - not about "inherent" intelligence, but rather stemming from the fact that perhaps you weren't on a level-playing field as the people you want to compete with. That's understandable, and alright — but what you must do, is shift the focus from questioning any "inherent intelligence" and get into the groove of putting efforts to level your own playing field. In that light, a lot of the "inherently intelligent" people do not become great lawyers; it's far more about "capability" of putting the hard work in a smart manner that helps those working above you — which can only be developed, in due time. Your internships are intended to test this capability, and yes, smartness can help, but ultimately, almost everyone would be far more likely to give job offers to a very hard-working person with baseline smartness, rather than a smart but lazy intern.
So, buckle up. Everything's fine. The roadmap can be found in the comment I've attached. This comment should be enough motivation and clarification for the other concerns. The rest is in your hands :)