It’s interesting how psychologists and mental health gurus preach about not placing value on the number of likes or views on social media, but if academic success is based on a number. Is it not the same thing? Both could be argued are irrelevant to each other, yet both have an underlying concept; that personal value or worth is derived from a number. personality and charisma contribute as well, but what makes you shine or stand out from the rest are the stats or specific quality so refined that can be measured by some metric. sports are all about analytics and major trading franchise decisions are based on those numbers and in one of my classes titled industrial psychology, the professor had a whole lesson on resumes and cover letters. It was surprising to hear that most hiring decisions are again based on the number of points that a resume generates by decision maker and just recently, my mother-in-law, had expressed to me that she needed to review resumes for a new hire and she based the applicants worthiness by the number of points she gave the resume… it went full circle and told myself isn’t that interesting. If even resumes get graded by number of points, what isn’t measured by a number? And is it possible to grow in a career without tracking success through numbers?

I understand that not everything is based the numbers, but why do we spend most of our lives working to achieve those targets. In the United States and in other countries in South America, for many of us, unless some unusual circumstance, we’ve gone through the twelve plus years in school and have only ascended to the next level because we achieved the requirements that was measured by specific target numbers. I am starting to believe that it’s not wrong or a negative to compare a skill or success by a number, but it’s odd to me how there are mixed messages about the topic. It’s important for people to focus on other traits like those involved with, I don’t know, behind human, understand how to show respect and how to act when you are getting respect, being nice to whomever you happen to interact with and not just because they might be an important person, but because it’s the right thing to do, even if you don’t feel like it.

In some ways, measuring stats is an easy identifiable way to get an overall view of skills or achievements and makes those great achievements that much more recognizable to someone who may not know you yet. Besides this logic, since I started my bachelor’s degree, I’ve challenged myself to be ultra-ambitious. I’ve placed this pressure on myself to achieve all A’s in all of my classes. I’m stepping up to the challenge of aiming for all As, cause truth be told, I’ve never been that student or that studious to be worth As. I’ve got to admit that has always been a contributor to me believing I couldn’t amount to anything. Deep down, I know it wasn’t true, but my confidence would dictate something else. perhaps this is the reason why I do correlate success with numbers because for so long, seeing my status and lack of academic achievements, I would get partially depressed over them and it would make me feel insecure about my future.

It’s definitely a debatable topic, but what do you think? do you believe we are valued by our stats? if we shouldn’t care about the number, why are we constantly evaluated with numbers? do our paychecks resemble those numbers? what do you think?