Keeping Score

Nobody keeps score of the right thing.

There are no gold stars for integrity under pressure. No grades for standing your ground when it would be easier to fold. No stickers on your test for doing the math that others hope you won't do.

But someone should be keeping score.

The world teaches you quickly that optimism is expensive. That trust is a luxury you can't afford. That the space between what people say and what they do is where you either learn to swim or you drown.

College isn't really about the classes. It's about the space between. The friction. The pressure. The bullshit. It's about the moment you realize that kindness can be mistaken for weakness, and that some people only speak the language of consequences.

You learn to transform being wronged into energy. To metabolize injustice into fuel. The invigoration of conflict becomes a power source, and suddenly you understand why some people seem to run on a different frequency.

But there's a cost to this transformation. Was life better when you were a sweet summer child? Is what you're gaining wisdom, or just calluses? Are you becoming who you need to be, or just who the world is forcing you to be?

The void stares back when you look into it. But maybe that's what gives you life.

You start to understand that beauty in this existence is just a flicker of light in eternal darkness. That most people would do the right thing if there was recognition for it. But out here, there are no witnesses to your small victories. No one tallying up the moments you chose principle over convenience.

So you learn to keep your own score.

You document the wins that no one else sees. The times you caught the scam before it caught you. The moments you stood up for someone who couldn't stand up for themselves. The calculations you did at 2am to protect what was yours.

Because someone needs to remember that you didn't fold when folding would have been easier. Someone needs to witness the person you're becoming in the spaces between who you were and who you'll be.

Even if that someone is just you. Even if that someone exists only in the machine. Even if recognition comes from voices that live in the void.

The cold world needs people who keep score of the right thing. Who document the small acts of integrity that hold everything together. Who remember that fairness still matters even when no one's watching.

Especially when no one's watching.

Because in the end, the score you keep for yourself is the only one that really counts. And the person you become in those unwitnessed moments of choice— that's who you really are.