September 27, 2010

Comments (4)

  • Wow. I had a bit of a flashback while reading this. Intriguing; I definitely am a defiant nerd, willing to be disliked for the sake of holding on to smarts. Not that I'm not a people pleaser too, but it's second. This article articulated that oddness much better than I ever could. Thanks for posting this!

  • That's a long article. It rings some bells. I was at my cruelest in jr. high, having been the brunt during grade school of teasing and ostracism. Eventually grew out of the meanness in high school. In the little schools I attended, brains and popularity weren't mutually exclusive, but it helped to be good at sports and other things as well. We picked on dweebs more than nerds. Nerds were a high percentage of the school.

    My kids have avoided most of this issue by being homeschooled.

  • These are issues I spend a lot of time thinking about and writing about in real life.  I have a fourth grade nerd-in-training, and one thing this article doesn't address is that nerds are nerds, born that way, like I was and like he was, and it's obvious from early in childhood.  It isn't only a matter of being smart.  But the most crucial and important part of this essay is the meaninglessness of teenaged life in the suburbs.  It's truly awful.

  • God that was excellent.  Just so much upsight packed into a single essay.

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