Academic Pandemic

Being a recluse from the moment you start public school more or less guarantees an extensive vocabulary at a young age. That’s how it worked for me, anyway. And I remember these two completely awful boys in my kindergarten class who, whenever I used a word that contained more than two syllables would say “Ooooohhh, big woooords!” Which isn’t really an insult, but you hear it enough times in a day and it becomes the refrain that haunts your early intellectual years. I mean, these were the same boys who had to be carried out of the classroom during a fire drill because they had tied themselves to chairs with Lego chains, so it’s not like there was any real scope or merit to anything they had to say, but I remember hating them with every fiber of my tiny five-year-old being all the same. I remember wondering if maybe it would be better to use smaller words, to keep my ideas to myself, to avoid the sort of attention that went with it altogether.
 
In sixth grade, my class was yelling out adjectives as my teacher wrote them on the board, and when I suggested “bulbous,” I had to go up and write it on the board myself because Ms. Fisher didn’t even know it was a word, much less how to spell it.
 
That’s more or less my elementary school experience in a nutshell. Cut to my sophomore year of college, where I’m sitting in the dining hall talking to my friend, who is working on a paper. He is explaining to me and another girl the intricate process he goes through while writing for classes. He’s a pretty smart dude, but he learned early on that if his profs catch on to this, they will hold him to a higher standard, and expect more from him and maybe even grade him a little harder than other students. He doesn’t want that sort of pressure, so he told us he dumbs himself down intentionally early in the semester, so when it becomes crunch time later on, he can write at full caliber and really impress, maybe getting better grades than he could have managed just writing normally.
From an early age, we learn that is is weird and often frowned upon (at least by our peers) to be “the smart one.” Now, I’m no rocket scientist by any means, but I know there are certain things in the realm of academia that I excel at. But once I became aware of social interaction (sometime around third or fourth grade, I think) it seemed like I had to choose between being actively brilliant or having friends. It’s a tougher decision than you might think. Even now that I’m in college, sometimes I’m afraid of answering too many questions in one lecture because I don’t want to seem like a teacher’s pet or a know-it-all.
 
I guess what piques my interest the most is what exactly made the system this way. Why are girls who act dumb cute, while smart girls are lame, nerdy and often-times shunned? Why is it more socially acceptable to be ignorant? A future run by hair-twirlers and blank stares sounds like a terrifying prospect. Even in college, boys like my dining hall friend feel like they can’t unleash their full talent or potential for fear of being treated differently. I mean, it’s good to be challenged mentally, but the longing for acceptance (and not being ridiculed) is perhaps the most powerful force in the human psyche. Much more powerful than the desire to be recognized as a smarty-pants.
 
So we just keep our mouths shut? Pretend we don’t know a better adjective than ‘happy’ or that we don’t exceed an eleventh grade reading level?
 
I’m not entirely sure what to draw from all this, or what needs to be done to change the paradigm in kids that there is a positive correlation between coolness and failing grades. Higher education is getting more and more expensive all the time, and if you’re not going to go in attempts to reach your greatest potential both in and out of the classroom, why waste your precious time and money? This Just In: Not everyone is going to like you. And if someone shuns you for being brilliant or creative or a good critical thinker, then why would you waste your time with them in the first place? If people are going to tease you, it should at least be for something good. Years of bullying and the ensuing emotional backlash taught me that if no one else will accept you, the very least you can do is accept yourself. And as soon as you realize how fabulous you are, you’ll have a hard time finding a damn to give about those with a negative attitude towards you.
 
I guess what it comes down to is if you refuse to think for yourself, somebody else will do your thinking for you. And frankly, I don’t trust anybody else enough with my brain. Does that mean I’ll always raise my hand when I know the answer, or that I’ll always go the extra mile to create the works of literary art I know I could be capable of every time I have to do a reading response? Well, no. But dude, embrace your talents, even if you get made fun of for them. Remember, the limpdick making fun of you is the one being carried out of the kindergarten classroom by the teacher’s aid because he had the brilliant idea of tying himself to a chair.

Set Phasers to Stunning: True Confessions of a Self-Proclaimed Ladynerd

As the title suggests, I’m a self-proclaimed ladynerd. I like Star Wars and Star Trek and Stargate SG-1 and Transformers and superheroes (Batman in particular), the whole bit. I’ve got a Star Trek encyclopedia, a billion t-shirts related to the aforementioned fandoms, action figures, Transformers bedsheets, even a life-size cardboard cutout of Darth Vader. I was raised on Star Trek: TNG because my parents watched it all the time. One of my earliest memories is going downstairs at night, seeing Worf on the TV and being really freaked out because he seemed so pissed and you know, bumpy. One of the first VHS tapes I remember watching was A New Hope when I was in preschool. I was with my mom, and I remember asking her to rewind back to the part where the Jawas are rounding up all the droids, and she wouldn’t because we were already like two thirds of the way through the movie. I remember struggling with the VCR months later when I wanted to watch Return of the Jedi but the remote was still a foreign object of strange technological hieroglyphics (if only I had a tricorder...). There was a pretty lengthy span in those tender years when every Friday night my family would order pizza and we would watch Mystery Science Theatre 3000. When I was in elementary school, I went to the local bookstore at least once a month to pick up a few new Star Trek novels (they’re still collecting dust one of my bookshelves somewhere). The summer after fourth grade I almost got myself signed up for the Klingon Language Institute. Until at least the end of eighth grade my family watched the new episode of Stargate together every week until about the tenth season, when it started to get dumb. I was writing fanfic about Data before I truly understood what that was. In sixth grade I brought both the Men in Black movies over to my best friend’s house because the fact she hadn’t seen either of them seriously jeopardized our friendship. Later that year, I gave up watching any DVDs for a month so my mom would let me get the director’s cut of Pitch Black. I’ve loved Transformers since I was fifteen and the first Michael Bay version came out. I’ve since gotten into the original TV cartoon, and I love that too. I developed a serious interest in Batman, the Punisher, and other anti-heroes early on in my freshman year of high school. My favorite movie that came out this summer was Cowboys and Aliens by a long shot. I have plans to wear my Batman onesie pajamas to the Dark Knight Rises premier this summer. In short, I’ve been at this for a long time. For me, this is a lifestyle.

Keep in mind I have many other interests besides the ones discussed in this essay. I’m a musician and know just about everything there is to know about a wide variety of music. Which, really, is just another form of nerd-dom. I mean, just yesterday I taught myself how to play the Imperial March on my electric bass.

I guess I should also say something about how I’m using the term “nerd.” By no means do I intend for it to be derogatory in any way. As far as I’m concerned, to be “nerdy” about something means that you just like it a whole lot, maybe more than the general populace may deem healthy, but hey, if you like something, then you like it. And there is nothing wrong with being passionate about things. Too many people drift through life completely devoid of passion, taking a lukewarm interest in this or that. In my professional opinion, it’s important to care about stuff.

Anyway, also allow me to add the disclaimer that I am by no means a comic book aficionado. Most of what I know is from movies, what I research on my own, or what my Marvel-guru friends tell me. Most of my experience with graphic novels involves Watchmen, Kick-Ass, and the Scott Pilgrim series. I wish I was more knowledgeable about the X-Men universe, everyone’s various origin stories, what the Batman villains are actually like, the original plots and characters, etc., but for now I freely admit that I have a lot more to learn. This may make you think I’m a bit of a poser, but I wanted to confess upfront the actual scope of my knowledge and where I get it from.

Either way, I like to think I know a lot about the things that I like. When I was younger, these things made me somewhat of a social pariah. In kindergarten I had this friend, Bryce, who would sit with me during snack time and we would sing the song the band plays in the Mos Eisley cantina together. He abandoned me in first grade though, because, well, I was awkward and  developing faster than any of the other kids and even then I think the social Darwinism of the popularity contest was already setting up instinctively in our minds. In fifth grade I was reading the Ultimate Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy while most other girls were giggling about what boy they were dating that week. Yeah, I kept mostly to myself until I was about twelve or thirteen, when the things that I love finally started to pay off. Or maybe the other people like me were finally revealing themselves.

It wasn’t until my freshmen year of high school that I really got comfortable in my own skin. I dyed my hair pink, lost twenty pounds, and finally decided that I would be who I was without any qualms about what others might think about me.

Then came the boys. The Christmas of my sophomore year of high school, my very first boyfriend got me the Optimash Prime Mr. Potato Head and a Punisher t-shirt. One of our first dates involved us sitting in his room and coloring Transformers fuzzy posters. At long last, my interests and areas of knowledgeability were getting celebrated. I felt more accepted than I ever had before.

And so, because of all that, it pains me to see all these girls my age prancing around in shirts that proclaims “I HEART NERDS!” with Snoopy or Tweety or Spongebob wearing horned-rimmed glasses on them.

No. No you do not.

More than pains, it pisses me off. I know this girl who posts these Facebook statuses alluding to Zelda or to Pokemon just to impress the nerdy gamer boys she likes. She literally commented once when a girl said something expressing her confusion: “It’s a nerd thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

No. It is a petty insecure girly thing. When one in ten statuses of Taylor Swift lyrics says something like “GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL LOLOL xoxox” there is something fundamentally wrong. Granted, I have more than once used my knowledge of Star Wars or Batman to get a guys’ attention (I’m sure my D cups also have something to do with it) but I went through years of social discomfort and having all my friends shun me because I was the only one who didn’t think Sailor Moon was cool to get to where I am. I have earned this, thanks. Besides, this is more than just a gimmick to score cute boys. It’s not just a front to seem cool or hipster. This is an integral part of who I am.

I got into Transformers and Star Trek and everything else because I genuinely enjoy them. Growing up, the Starship Enterprise felt like a family to me, and I wanted desperately to be a part of their crew for years. I started to love X-Men so much because I knew firsthand what it was like to be an outsider, to be rejected by society because I was different (that, and Wolverine is smokin’ hot). I’m not trying to make this a sob story, because I’m pretty damn grateful for how I grew up because I think I turned out awesome. And not just because I get along great with a specific type of boy now. Because a) there has to be more to a relationship than “Ohhhh we like the same TV shows!” and b) I’ve dated guys who think my quirks are seriously weird and should be overlooked and ignored.

My second semester of college I got introduced into a group of people and upon hanging out with them for maybe ten seconds I thought, “Oh my God, these guys are just like me!” It was a new and exciting experience, for my nerdiness to not just be appreciated, but celebrated. So I guess this is a word (well, several words) of encouragement to girls who feel desperately awkward or like they’ll never be accepted or loved: it does get better. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Someone is bound to come along and appreciate the crap outta you, and even if they don’t, well hell, that’s not why you’re nerding out about any given band, book, or Sci-Fi series in the first place, right? At least it shouldn’t be. You deserve to be you, because no one else can do it with the same style and finesse that you can. So go for it, don’t feel like you have to hide. In high school my physics teacher had a Star Trek uniform (he let me borrow it for a sociology project I did), so you can function fine in the real world with all kinds of quirks and interests.
 

It’s also a warning: ladies, if you pop the lenses out of your 3-D glasses in attempts to hook up with a Zachary Quinto as Spock look-a-like, you better be able to tell the difference between Skywalker and Scotty. Because I will find you. And aside from that empty threat, nerdy boys (or girls, for that matter) are not “easy prey,” we are people, just like you, and we will see right through if you ask said Spock look-a-like to “teach you the ways of the force.”