It was an empty, sick morning. Shaking off the cobwebs of sleep I stared at the eerie blue poster tacked to my ceiling, displaying the cover of a Radiohead album with the words "fitter, happier, and more productive " written across it in neat block print.

It was the worst morning after in a while. But this was no ordinary sub-par, groggy with a headache start to my day. It was the morning after I received my college acceptance, and consequently the morning I temporarily ran out of relevant quantifiable measurements.

All our lives we have been urged to achieve by teachers, parents, and just as often standardized tests.

Thanks to various posters of basketballs arcing toward the hoop about to satisfyingly swish through the net, I have been thoroughly taught the wisdom that I will miss 100 percent of the shots that I don 't take.

Stolid looking football giants and snowboarders on mountain tops urge my peers and me on; reminding us of our goal by being photographed and placed on the walls of the building with one word of explanation, written in neat block print and perfectly spaced. Achieve.

But after the ACT, PSAT, SAT, WISC, and the rest had been filled out, turned in, and graded, after a cumulative GPA had been firmly established and the social ladder had been climbed to satisfaction, what 's next?

We 'd joined the clubs, made the numbers, and been thoroughly distracted by quantifiable measures, and now they were gone.

In the beginning there was nothing but optimism. We were all hurried along. They tried to pile us all on the "road to success " by the truckload.

Everyone was enthusiastically put on the track to a higher education, and the average senior was college bound.

Now we 've reached the end, where they say we 're supposed to feel we 'd made it, and we 've been given a moment of contemplation we never had.

Previous generations have struggled incessantly to be, and make us, fitter, happier, and more productive without taking due time to consider the consequences.

We are inheriting an incredibly troubled world. The water and air are polluted, the climate is changing, and non-renewable resources are rapidly depleting.

Their hunger for progress, for some gain they can quantify, has left many starving. The dream of having an intellectual conversation with your kids has been replaced with the dream for "My Child is an Honor Student " bumper stickers.

Our society 's obsession with numbers, with the best benchmarks and lowest calories, has caused many to lose sight of what education is really about.

There is too much emphasis on meeting the benchmarks and not enough on actually building an intellect. To deal with the world 's problems, we must outgrow our obsession with statistics and learn to think.

When we 're out of fossil fuels, the mountains have been inundated due to climate change, and the world has bombed itself into the Stone Age because we were too busy learning to read at grade level to figure out how to get along, the Joneses will be too busy ducking for cover to even hazard a glance at our bumpers ' catalogue of our progenies ' accomplishments.

Listening to our children 's decidedly un-poetic last words, we may finally remember that test scores aren 't everything.

McLinn is a 2008 graduate of Middleton High School.