Internal Scorecard
August always hits at full speed. School’s back, I’m teaching again, and football season takes over my weekends, for better or worse. It’s also the season for reconnecting. I just got home from a McCombs reunion. Great conversations, though light on actual classmates. That forced me out of my comfort zone to mix with strangers, which reminded me of traveling solo through Europe in college. When you’re alone, you either stay quiet or you start talking. I’m naturally a bit shy, so these moments become practice for meeting new people.
The question I heard most at the event was: “What did you get from your graduate program at UT?” I had a few answers.
The first was business acumen. Even if you don’t end up in accounting or marketing, you start to see how everything in a company ties back to one fundamental goal: create value. I thought I had a solid grasp from work experience, but sitting with brilliant professors and classmates from diverse backgrounds and wildly different industries forces you to think at another level. Sure, you can find the content online, even through AI now, but you can’t replicate the growth that comes from being surrounded by people with real stories. Their failures, successes, and detours all shape your own perspective.
The second was expanding my capacity for what I thought I could handle. Working full-time while grinding through grad school takes discipline, grit, and sacrifice. It stretched my framework for how much I could take on while still trying to succeed in everything I do. I still fall short plenty, but as long as I know I’m giving everything I can and making a difference, the sacrifices are worth it.
I recently heard on a podcast about a lesson Warren Buffett learned from his father: internal scorecards. The idea is simple. Would you rather be the best, but have everyone thinks you’re the worst, or be the worst but have everyone think you’re the best? Only you know whether you’re truly doing your best or just putting on a show. Social media throws gasoline on the comparison fire, making us compete with peers, friends, and strangers who've mastered the art of false realities.
The last thing I mentioned was my teaching role. A couple of former students from last year stopped by my office this week, not for grades or extra credit, but just to bounce business ideas around. Having students reach out long after their grade is secured and the course is finished feels incredibly rewarding. It means I've built some kind of trust and credibility that they want me to continue being part of their career journey. When previous students tell me how much they learned and appreciated the knowledge passed down, it makes it worth all the sacrifices of juggling work, teaching, and family.
I’ve written before that happiness isn’t the best metric for life. It’s too volatile. You can be happy with your morning coffee and miserable five minutes later with a speeding ticket. Instead of chasing a fleeting and ever-changing emotion, fulfillment is the better measure. Are you fulfilled with what you’ve done? The impact you’ve made? The effort you’re putting into future impactful change?
At the end of the day, your internal scorecard is the only real measurement of fulfillment. It doesn’t care about your highlight reel, your social media likes, or anyone’s opinion of you. It only cares about whether you used your time and energy to do something meaningful, whether you grew, contributed, and mattered.
