Confession: While I like to think of myself as a relatively well-informed and well-read individual, I wasn't the greatest student. I was a chronic doodler and found countless ways to put off doing my homework. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your perspective), my slothful ways never really caught up with me. Somehow I managed to do well enough on tests despite my efforts to sabotage myself with endless "Simpsons" reruns, although I invariably felt that my scores failed to reflect both how smart I actually was and how little I prepared (proof that there is such a creature as the insecure narcissist). It just goes to show, I suppose, that tests aren't really the arbiters of what we know and don't know.

Case in point: I just took last year's standardized English Language-Arts Test for the 11th grade - which anyone can sample at the state Department of Education's Web site and which the state uses to monitor its districts' progress - and while I scored well (a 95 percent, thank you very much), there were only 38 questions, nine of which were devoted to understanding a car rental agreement and the instructions of a food processor. Only one great literary work was examined - "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne - and there were scant vocabulary questions, which, maybe, is a good thing.

As someone who graduated from high school in 1998, I missed the whole standardized test craze that fell with a solid thud in the new millennium. It might sound strange, but I occasionally wondered whether I was cheated out of a better education because I (and the schools I attended) wasn't forced to live up to the prickly standards of the state or federal government. Was I - gasp! - one of those American students who failed to measure up against the international competition? You know who I'm talking about, the millions of students in Europe, Asia and elsewhere who are reputed to speak more languages, be better versed in current affairs and on the whole are more intellectually stimulated than their western cousins.

While I can't answer that question - it joins a long list - I can say that my foray into the world of standardized testing didn't exactly fill me with the overwhelming confidence that the results of these tests will mean anything significant. Sure, the state will use them to decide which school districts are doing their job and how to parcel out an increasingly limited chunk of resources, but is it more than just a numbers game?

In speaking with the district's curriculum director, Elizabeth Chapin-Pinotti, about the county's California High School Exit Exam and Standardized Testing and Reporting results, which were released last week, it occurred to me that the above question doesn't simply have a 'yes' or 'no' answer.

Chapin-Pinotti said that California schools tend to get a bad rap on the national stage when the test results come out, because what's not factored in is that the state employs some of the strictest standards in the country.

"The state set the bar very high and we're not backing down," Chapin-Pinotti said.

She also acknowledges that it would be "extremely simplistic" to use CAHSEE and STAR results as the only measuring sticks for calculating intellectual ability. Can some 65-odd questions on a STAR exam sum up what a second grader in Sutter Creek Elementary really learned that year? Not necessarily, she says and she's not the only one.

Connecticut recently filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education over President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind law, arguing that the federal government has mandated the issuance of yearly tests it hasn't provided the necessary funds for, or any proof that testing on a yearly basis rather than on alternate years as Connecticut currently does actually helps students. Maine is also looking into the possibility of joining the suit or filing its own, The New York Times reported on Monday.

So what is it about tests we all love so much (and don't kid yourself, we're obsessed with them)? I think it has something to do with the simplicity of being able to quantify an amorphous concept such as intelligence. Color in a few bubbles, feed your sheet into the Scantron machine and find out how smart you are. And the strange thing is that even after high school and college and after having taken hundreds of scholastic tests through roughly 20 years of school, we're not done with them.

There are employee evaluations and credit assessments and loan applications and - even weirder - the tests we actually choose to take in our spare time: crossword puzzles, jumbles, online IQ and personality tests. It never stops.

But is it really so bad for people to crave a little disposable evaluation? Maybe what they're really craving is intellectual stimulation. Heck, even Tommy Lee is back in school.

And despite my mild case of "slackeritis," I would go back to school in an instant ... you know, if I won the lottery and could actually afford the tuition.

My hypothetical love of learning was actually one of the major reasons I got into reporting: It forces me on a daily basis to seek out information I wouldn't otherwise pursue as a civilian. Sure, I'm reading environmental impact reports instead of "Beowulf," but knowledge is knowledge. And who knows when the next test is coming up.