GPA: Genuinely pesky aggravation, greatly pointless analysis, general pain in the arse, or, most commonly, grade point average.The abbreviated abomination makes me grit my teeth at the thought of it and roll my eyes at its mention. My parents think I'm just another whiney youngun' blaming the system for not catering to my laziness, but I know better. There is a problem with our academic system, and it's not just my lack of enthusiasm for it. The problem lies in that number that determines my worth as a student (or worthlessness, if you decide to round down).

GPAs are silly. I mean, think about it-how meaningful is a number that averages the grades you get for multivariable calculus and acrylic painting? What exactly does a 3.5 GPA mean? Is the missing half-point a mathematical representation of my inability to attain academic perfection, if such a thing exists?

GPAs are used in ranking and applications to compare students by seemingly objective means. But how can individual students' grades be objective when so many biased factors come into play? Grading style, learning environment, teacher proficiency-the list goes on. We have assessment tests like the SAT to compare students' academic standing on a standardized, unbiased basis (or at least as close as we can come to it). There is really no unbiased way to compare students' intelligence other than on basic skills like math and reading, because there is no overlying rubric to judge all people on the many complex layers constituting their individual strengths.

Complete academic success is only possible with a specific personality type that thrives in this particular academic system. In the real world, one's success and intelligence are determined by many other factors that don't fall into the narrow means of assessment used in schools. Number grades should be limited to standardized tests and unbiased material-that is, material as straightforward and unbiased as math problems. Everything else that has room for interpretation should be treated and interpreted as such. If all "good" writing in society was judged by a single rubric pushed by English teachers, some of our most brilliant and creative minds would never have made it in the world of literature-e. e. cummings, anyone?

The overemphasis on grades in modern academia has taken away the original meaning of obtaining an education-that is, learning as opposed to performing. As far as I can tell, students nowadays care more about the final marks they receive in a class than the knowledge they obtain from it. I can vouch for this phenomenon from personal experience-there has been many an instance where I threw my understanding of a subject to the wind, giving preference to blind memorization and regurgitation of facts and figures to obtain an easy A. I have asked friends (who seem brilliant outside of the classroom) why their grades suffer in school. Their response? School either fails to motivate, it's a waste of time, or it's too darn competitive. Coming from a high school where all 3,000 students' individual cumulative averages were calculated to the second decimal place, this is completely understandable. Is this really how we want the brilliant minds of our generation to approach academia?

Up until the turn of the 19th century, the entire history of academics and schooling had been based strictly on a pass/fail system. In 1792, William Farish, a tutor at Cambridge University, invented a numeric system to rate a child's performance in school, paying no mind to factors like learning style and individual strengths that get overlooked by precise methods of assessment.

The only benefit from using a numeric system to grade students' academic standing is the sheer convenience; it's much easier to compare two numbers than two people and, subsequently, two different breadths of knowledge. But really, education shouldn't be a matter of comparison and competition, because intelligence is about as objective as music or art. One individual's intelligence isn't necessarily better than another's; they're just different. There are are a multitude of catagories in which someone can excel. (You're smart enough, I'm sure, to figure them out yourselves.)

The whole matter of grading becomes completely arbitrary when standardized tests are out of the picture. Different teachers have different standards, and depending on your luck one semester, your grades may or may not be subject to negotiation. This applies more so to writing-heavy classes than test-heavy ones, because academic writing leaves much more room for interpretation than a simple right or wrong answer on a Scantron test.

Also, there are the students who thrive in one aspect of academics but completely fail at another-the quiet but diligent test takers versus the lazy but active discussion carriers. How in that case is it fair that exams comprise 50 percent of a semester grade, when participation only accounts for 10 percent?

Before you completely brush off the pass/fail system as a mere slacker's dream, take into consideration a unique school like Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. Hampshire is one of several "alternative curriculum" colleges around the United States that stress individual motivation through independent study and project work.

Hampshire also makes use of detailed written evaluations of student performance as opposed to grades. This, in essence, rids academia of all its unnecessary competitive components-by focusing on individual study and coherent evaluation of one's work by non-scaled means, the pressure to outwork one's peers is replaced with a focus and drive to learn.

I'm not saying we should get rid of the grading system all together. I just think that, in an age where so much emphasis is placed on standardization and point value-SATs, GPAs, etc.-we often get so caught up in the system that we forget that we are more than just numbers on a grading scale. Something as fluid as education should not be evaluated within the confines of an exact numeric grade.

We have standardized tests to compare our academic standing nationwide, and that's fine. But everything else-our work, our studies, our unique efforts and our collected bodies of knowledge-need to be shown appreciation for. Until then, I refuse to be treated as just another number.