1. Do you Likert?

I have measured out my life on Likert scales.

It was A, B, C, D, or F all through school, college, and grad school. Then, as a professor, my annual evaluations rebranded the grading scale as Superior, Exceeds Expectations, Meets Expectations, Does Not Meet, Unsatisfactory. At the end of each term, my students indicated, on a five-point scale, the extent to which they agreed with the statement “Overall, I would rate this teacher as good.” Their comments mattered too, of course. You always fixate on the negative ones (“She said ‘um’ too much. We counted over 100 ums in one class”; “She’s only funny when she doesn’t mean to be”), but really it’s the numbers that count.

I’ve had other numbers and scales governing my life, too, but always there was Likert.

I couldn’t wait until I retired, when the lifelong assessments would finally cease.

2. Overall, I would rate the Likert scale as good.

You might not have heard of the Likert scale, but you’ve probably been Likerted your whole life. Psychologist Rensis Likert (pronounced LICK-urt) created his scale in 1932 to fill a need in our ever-ordinate, ever-analyzed world; it turned feelings into numbers, or qualities into quantities. At its core, a Likert scale is meant to aggregate and measure individual feelings, attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and behaviors that otherwise elude the surveillance of data-gathering. Likerts most often ask respondents to rate their degree of agreement, but they can also measure frequency, importance, level of satisfaction, and likelihood. While there can be any number of symmetrical options, there are almost always five, as was the case for nearly all of my evaluations.

Not all five-point scales strictly qualify as Likert scales, but the term has crept onto all kinds of non-Likert, or Likert-like, or Likert-lite, scales. I’m less concerned, though, with this semantic creep than with the creep in Likerty assessment. In academia, where I spent my career, my value as a professor was entirely numerical. I became dependent on it. I was rarely told I was doing a good job, but at least I got a number that bestowed worth.

3. How likely are you to recommend the Likert scale to your colleagues?

Assessments abound in academia, even in the humanities, where turning quality into quantity should be anathema, as should de-individualizing responses through aggregation. “Critical thinking” meant distrusting the apparatuses that purported to generate truth, even if we also relied on them to render seemingly objective certainties uncertain and objectionable.

And yet, when it came to career assessment, we played along uncritically. We quantified our best qualities. Though we sometimes tried to include narratives to contextualize our numerical assessments, we still numbered ourselves. Not just because it’s easier to quantify than to qualify, or to count than to read. Not just because we believe in accountability (and accountability involved counting, right?). Not even just because we understand how feelings, too, are fallible, and how cold hard numbers can mitigate against unconscious bias.

When it comes to career assessment, we humanities folks Likert ourselves anyway in part because, in spite of our qualms, we, too, are products of our neoliberal culture and feel that numbers are realer than feelings, despite what we know. Secretly, we hate-love Likerts with a masochist’s passion, and crave its assurances.

4. I find the Likert Scale creepy.

Assessment creep has spread way beyond academia. Likert seeps liquid-like into every crevice of everyday life, liquidating individuality in its aggregating force. It’s the disciplinary Panopticon that Foucault warned us about. At the grocery store’s self-service check-out, I’m asked to star-rate my experience. The coffee shop requests my five-scale rankings on the staff’s friendliness and the facility’s cleanliness. My healthcare provider is currently stalking me to Likert an appointment that got cancelled.

If assessment numbers confer worth, lack of numbers implies worthlessness. So now that I’ve retired, and the numbers have stopped coming, I’m appalled to find myself missing them. How do I have value, and know it, without them? How does anything? How can you enjoy an apple without comparing it to other apples? How do you dare to eat a peach without logging your experience?

5. I can live without Likert.

I am a tree falling in the forest with no one to review it. Against the neoliberal logic reducing all value to exchange value, I struggle to create a life where the worth is in the experience itself, not in the number it merits.

For a while, I considered tongue-in-cheekily rating my own damn self. After all, I’m already asked to rate my self-service experience in the grocery store. Why not rate the quality of my dog-walking (four stars), my personal hygiene (three stars—well, sometimes two), or my mood swings (five stars—or one—or maybe three). Why not, as a grand joke, rate my overall satisfaction with the quality of my life, or of this world, or of the universe? But the send-up never quite sends up the rating system; instead, it sends me down down down that rank rabbit hole.

Because if you’ve Likerted your whole life, how thinkable is it to live Likertless, without a five-star review? How worthy can you be without an identifying number? Very worthy, somewhat worthy, or maybe, let’s be honest, not worthy at all? How important is it to you (very, somewhat, moderately, slightly, not at all) to learn how to just enjoy a moment without starring it? How happy are you, after all—one to five—with this Likert life?