Everything That Counts
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. — Albert Einstein
I was searching my inbox for writing topics and happened upon my Harvard Law School application from 2011 (spoiler I didn’t get in). It got me reflecting on the role of quantification in my life. I wanted to share a painful and objective failure to demonstrate the challenges of “Playing by the Numbers” (the title of my admissions essay). And, I wanted to reinforce to myself and to you that the most important things aren’t directly measurable. My self worth can’t be reduced to a single number. Quantification — grades, salaries, height, weight, square footage — will always be a thing. But you choose how they add to the story you’re living through your life.
I was a 21-year-old senior in what I thought was my penultimate semester of college at UGA (University of Georgia, Athens). I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, so like any good African I negotiated with my parents between medicine and law. They were ok with the law since I was squeamish at the thought of cutting into an undercooked steak, much less a man.
My first time taking the LSAT, I scored a 149, which was worse than 60 percent of test takers. Admittedly, I came into the test unprepared for a variety of personal and family reasons I won’t bore you with. But I was shocked and crestfallen that I was in the bottom half of a distribution. My self worth was tied up in being the smart kid who could walk into any room and be one of the smartest in that building. The cockiness wasn’t baseless. At 12 years old I had taken the SAT (~1200 score IIRC) and outperformed most college juniors and seniors. Now at 21, I was dumber than most college juniors and seniors aspiring to law school. I was depressed.
I scheduled to take the test a second time. I doubled my resolve. Four weeks before the test, I studied for 2 hours a day during the weekday and for 4 hours on the weekend. I scored consistently in the 160 and 165 range, which would have put me in the top 10 to 20% of test takers. That’s where I felt I belonged. Among the best and brightest. I got my results back from the second test — 154. I was worse than 40% of test takers. It felt like I was the smartest dumb guy, which is an oxymoron I was no longer qualified to understand.
Mike Tyson, one of our modern day philosophers, has a great saying: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” I had gotten suckered punched and my post graduation plans were getting derailed. All the schools I applied to rejected me except for HLS, which put me on a waitlist. The HLS waitlist threw uncertainty in my plans since a rejection would have simplified my planning. But I held out hope. Since I devoted my energies to law school recruiting, I didn’t focus too much on job recruiting and missed most of the good opportunities. As a compromise I ended up taking an unpaid internship selling old folks investment portfolios at JP Turner & Co in Atlanta while I waited for HLS to come back with an answer. When they finally rejected me in July 2012, I decided to stay one more semester at UGA to finish a math degree and get a real job.
LOL. Anybody that saw my math SAT scores (510/800, worse than 63% of people) would have laughed at the thought that i would take more than one math class in college. Let alone do well. But that’s exactly what I did. It wasn’t something measurable like IQ that caused me to succeed in undergraduate math. It was stubbornness and a desire to learn. You can count the hours I put into understanding math concepts but you won’t be able to measure what I learned. I ended up graduating with honors in math at UGA and being recognized as one of the top undergrads in math (John G Hollingsworth Award).
Since 2011, a lot has changed for me. I’ve worked multiple jobs that others would love to have. I’ve earned two graduate degrees from an Ivy League institution that others would love to attend. Despite these changes, I’m struck by one constant that has seen me through ups and downs. The HLS letter reminded me that one of the most valuable things I have is my resilience.
As I think about my path forward, I want to be intentional about which numbers I let define me. I want to be rich (as in cash, a rich life of course, but CREAM IYKYK). But I don’t want to be measured by money because I’ll always be in a lower percentile that hurts my ego. I want to love and be loved. But I don’t want to become addicted to heart buttons and retweets because that kind of candy only nourishes so much. I want to do groundbreaking work. But I don’t want to measure myself by the size of my organization or my performance ratings.
In the big scheme of human life, the only number that really matters is one. One life is all we have, and I don’t want to waste it focusing on counting what doesn’t count or not cherishing the things that do.
