Talk Nerdy to Me

I'm a proud self-proclaimed nerd - if we've ever had a conversation, you've probably heard me talk about my nerdiness. In true nerd fashion, I'd like to introduce myself by talking about what it means to be a nerd.

For a basic look into the word "nerd," Meriam-Webster's first definition is "a person devoted to intellectual, academic, or technical pursuits or interests." Several dictionaries also offer a less flattering image of the nerd - for instance the Cambridge Learner's Dictionary describes nerdy as "boring and not fashionable." How rude! If you want to go down my rabbit hole for today, look up "nerd" in Urban Dictionary. None of these definitions satisfied my quest to really explain why it's cool to be a nerd, though. I started Googling, and in the depths of the internet I found a great blog post called "Why Do Nerds Stand Out? The Fascinating Rise of Passionate Minds." The author, Alex Sterling gets at what the standard definitions miss. Being a nerd is about curiosity and passion for the things that we love.

I got my nerdiness from my dad. I got some nerdiness from Mom, too, but she's way too fashion-forward to be a nerd so I'll focus on Dad for this story. Dad dives deep into the things that he's passionate about - family, science, comics, books, sci-fi, art, and religion, just to name a few. This summer, my husband and I traveled to Greece and Turkey with my parents and we visited the ancient city of Ephesus. Here's a great picture from the trip.

Beth and her parents in Ephesus, Turkey.

The point of the story isn't to brag about the awesome trip we took this summer. It was really cool, though! The point I want to make here is that when Dad shared this picture with his friends on Facebook, he didn't give it a basic caption like I did here (although I added a little heart, just to showcase how cute my parents are). Instead, he wrote

"Kathy, Beth and I are standing on the Marble Road. This section of road leads from the Library of Celcus (the two-story building in the distant background) to the Grand Theater. It was paved with white marble by a 5th century Roman named Eutrophius. The center section of the street is slightly raised, and a sewer ran beneath it. As the crowd behind us indicates, Ephesus is a popular tourist destination. Photo by Wes."

To me, this caption gives a little insight into how Dad lives his life - fully immersed in the moment. He didn't just walk down a road in a historic place, he connected to the history of that place through the people who made it and where it leads. I also really love that he wondered why the street was slightly raised in the center and took the time to find the answer.

A common nerd trope is the video gamer. I grew up on the cusp of the technology age. Our primary phone was a landline and my first internet was a dial-up connection. My dad loved it all, so my four brothers and I grew up playing (and sometimes fighting over...) video games. We started with Dad's Atari and PC games like the Oregon Trail and Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist. We had an original NES and all the Nintendo systems after that as well - probably because Dad enjoyed playing just as much as we did. Nerds may have started out as oddities thanks to their hyperfocusing on the things that interested them most. But, as technology became more integral to society the role of the nerd changed. Bill Gates saw it coming before anybody else - in a 1988 interview for Success magazine, he said "Be nice to nerds. Chances are, you'll end up working for one."

Dad used to hang the week's Family Circus or The Far Side comic on the fridge when it tickled him. Could Gary Larson (The Far Side cartoonist) have imagined how differently his comic from October 15, 1990 would read 35 years later? Let's be real - someone with "50,000 hours or more of video game experience" is probably the CEO of a huge tech company at this point.

Larson, G. (2003). The complete far side.  (Vol. 2, 1987-1994). Andrews McMeel Pub.

Nerd-life can benefit our students, too. I think I like my learning center colleagues so much because the best qualities of being a nerd are at the essence of our jobs.

• Nerds are curious creatures. We ask "why" and "how" for pretty much everything. UC Irvine's Learning & Academic Resource Center has a great page on using elaborative interrogation as a study strategy.

• Nerds form strong communities. This doesn't mean nerds want to be popular, but that they value authenticity and a shared love for their passion (or current obsession). I love Brene Brown's The Gifts of Imperfection, and often look back to her five common factors of resilient people. Two of the five involve community and a sense of belonging. - resilient people 1. have social support available to them, and 2. are connected with others, such as family or friends.

• Anybody can be a nerd. Being a nerd isn't about specific personality types or bad fashion sense. Being a nerd is about passion and curiosity. Learning centers are well-positioned to help students explore this mindset. Check out Stanford University's Teaching Commons website for some great resources on Growth Mindset.

My nerdiness helped carve my path to the learning center profession. I have a strange set of interests that are all held together by the common threads of curiosity and passion for learning. My name is Beth, and I nerd out for music, science (especially acoustics), education, pedagogy, math, data visualization, Superman (other comics are ok, too), games, and cats. What do you nerd out for?