100%

100% - Grace Wu (Scarsdale High School, 11th Grade)

Numbers are worthless. 

Meaningless. 

They hold no value, 

no significance, 

no originality 

as every statistic, 

every repeating decimal, 

fades into the same string of incoherency that wraps slowly, silently 

around the necks of the soulless. 

100 to succeed in schools 

that accept you if you have enough 100s. 100 to win first place in competitions that require your 100 academic average. 

Can you express intentions in numbers? Love as a percentage? 

Anguish, despair, and utter hopelessness on a pie chart? 

100 to be a good person. 

100 to have a kind heart. 

100 to try your best, even if your best is a three-day sober streak, 

a B average in chemistry, 

or sleeping ten hours on a school night. 100 to want to be a good person. 

When you grow up with numbers that define your intelligence, career, 

and worth as a human being, 

you find easily 

you are 100% worthless.