Dork -> Nerd -> Geek
I have never, in my entire life, been socially “normal.” For that matter, I’m not even sure what “normal” is. But whatever it is, I’m sure I wasn’t it.
Middle school was a disaster for me. I went from having at least a few friends in elementary school, to having precisely one (albeit very awesome) friend in middle school. I didn’t grow up properly in that summer between fifth and sixth grade. Nothing about me really changed, or at least I don’t think anything did, but the world around me suddenly became completely foreign to me.
I wore the most dumb clothing, let me tell you. The eighties were over, but I was still wearing stirrup pants. And my mother, for some reason, thought that pleated pants were good, so I had only those. (I have since learned from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and What Not to Wear that that was never the case.) Along with those hideous things, I wore these seriously ugly sweat shirts every day. My favorite one was black and had fake cross-stitching in puff-paint along the front. All the while, the “cool” or even “acceptable” people around me were wearing jeans and tee-shirts. I must have missed that memo.
My entire life revolved around science fiction. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still love Star Trek and classic X-Files, along with a bunch of other fun things, but I have other things going on these days. Back then, though, I didn’t. I read sci-fi books, I watched sci-fi television, and I waited in long lines to see sci-fi movies. Other than that, I ate, slept, and did homework (and enjoyed doing math homework).
I spent my middle school career as a dork, defined only by my social ineptitude and nothing more.
Luckily, my parents were smart enough to move me out of that school system. The change of scenery really affected my life. I grew up a lot between eighth and ninth grade. I was still a social disaster, but the required uniforms got rid of the ugly-clothing barrier, and I was starting to realize that I loved things that weren’t sci-fi almost as much as I loved sci-fi. I joined all the clubs I could stand – I was in the choir, on the stage with the “Stage East Players,” the only girl in the computer club, one of only two girls on the math team, and on the staff of the newspaper. I developed into a leader in every one of those organizations, and actually had some respect. That was pretty awesome.
I couldn’t gloss over that math team stuff, though. I mentioned before that I enjoyed math homework. Math team was just like extra math homework that you do in some other school’s cafetorium. I loved it. I was the captain of the math team.
I had a reasonably existent social life in high school. I had people to talk to; people to hang out with; people to do stuff with. I wasn’t the most popular by any stretch of the imagination, but I could hold my own.
I was still socially inept, but I had realized I had some real diverse interests, and that gave me at least part of a personality, as a nerd.
Now, I have always been a pretty shy person. New people, new things, and change of any kind scare the crap out of me. So, adapting to college was going to be very difficult. That is why I made a conscious decision to “get over it.” I decided that I was not going to be shy, and I made it my duty to learn the names of every single person on my freshman floor within a day. I wanted to know everyone. I know for a fact that I scared at least two people with my overbearing bubbliness.
WPI gave me so much opportunity to grow as a person. I learned so much, and spent time with such a true variety of people. I learned that my love of artistic things was too real to be pushed back behind math. I finished my math classes my freshman year and never looked back. I developed a real interest in theatre, not just “strutting round the stage” (name the source, win a prize, where prize == adoration from your loving fans) like I did in high school. I became a staple of the music community, I belonged in the theatre community, I had a great group of friends from my freshman dorm floor, and I found myself.
Of course, WPI is completely full of technology-freaks, gadget-geeks, encyclopedia-heads, nerds, dorks, and geeks of all kinds. Being accepted in this crowd does not make one “normal.” But I found myself there. And I learned that being a geek really wasn’t so bad. I learned how to turn my peculiar interests and eccentric expertise into an asset.
I now work in a completely geek-filled environment. I am a software engineer. Those there are two words that scream “geek!” if there are any. I own a ridiculous number of gadgets. I enjoy problem solving. I still get nervous around people I don’t know. I am not satisfied with an off-the-shelf website. I watch Battlestar Galactica every week that it’s on (when is that coming back!?), and spent a good portion of my summer watching every episode of Babylon 5 in order (though, I never did finish…). My desk is covered with paper airplanes. I play video games. I study things for fun.
I am a geek.
I am proud to be a geek.