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why nerds are unpopular (essay)

I really liked this essay, and I think it applies to many public schools in America with large populations of suburban kids. IME, there were many many ''nerds" who were dumb as a rocks, and that's where I have problems with the essay. I'd say that parenting, natural social skills, learned social skills from your early childhood, and looks play a big role together instead of just smarts. I had to move to a new state halfway through my sixth grade year, and I think that I could have moved anywhere in the States and still would have been a hippy-like "freak" as this essay calls it. I looked like one, I talked like one, had the same interests, etc... So when I moved, the "freaks" more or less came to me and invited me into the group.

Another thing I thought of...the "nerds" (smart or not) at my schools would talk about The Dumbest Shit Ever and act extremely immature. The "freaks" talked about pop-culture, bands that older kids were into, and make fun of the teachers, etc. They were much more fun to be around and seperated themselves from the "nerds" as much as possible.
 
^ This was my experience as well. I was definitely a 'nerd', but now in medical school, I hang with both 'nerd' and 'freak' groups. I agree with the essay that these two groups become allies in early adulthood, and there's a lot of intermingling between them. Both are more interested in the life of the mind than the social ladder. It's just that to nerds, this takes on a more scientific or left-brained bent, while with freaks it's a more artistic, right-brained bent. The nerds and freaks at medical school latched onto me right away.

The social climbers and sports people, as usual, can't make heads or tails of me, and can't be fucked to try.
 
Are american schools really that facist? Some of the best basketball and football players in my school were also the anonymous ones, yet some were king of the castle! Our lunch tables were just different social groups, with different musical and recreational interests. In my school there would have been just A and E! I think its ridiculous how people could like people just because the fact that other people do.

Intresting read!
 
I wasnt super popular in HS...but I do recall one of the girls who was, decided to get into journalism, and ended up requiring my "services"

that, was fucking funny as hell.
 
This essay is interesting, as it totally reinforces my view of american schools as learned through american movies, yet is totally unrelated to my highschool experience. Our graduating class was about 250, and everyone pretty much knew everyone. The smart kids, aka the advanced classes were always the most popular kids, apply for student council, stuff like that. No one was foricibly outcast unless they were retarded and unsocialable.
 
^ lol, Fast Times at Ridgemont High isn't far from the reality, bro'...
 
i'm really smart like Ap classes and a 4.0 and shit but i get down and stuff. Harder then most but you are kinda right cause my AP classes are always full of some losers. I honelstly think like people that dont drink and party are jus kinda weird.
 
Shit my school experience wasnt like none of yalls. sounds more like a movie about high school and grade school than any of my schoolin evevr was. I moved from a low income area where i was a minority to the only affordable section of a different place about 45 min. away that was the total opposite. i knew one world growing up then it just changed and then i was surrounded by ppl that i couldnt relate to at all. there was no walking anywhere, no corner stores, no rap music comin from the house next door, i dont think people up there had even ever heard of rap yet.

I did good in school without tryin but i hated every day of it, i got made fun of because i only talked to the 2 black girls and 1 dominican kid in my grade, because they were "uncool" for being dark skinned. anyone who talked to them or sat with them at lunch was a 'weirdo'. I also made friends with all the "weird" kids like me whose parents was divorced, or who lived in trailer homes, or never talked in class and the other kids would be afraid of,etc. I always felt lonely and knew I didnt belong and just wished i could go to school back home.

Kids had more reason to make fun of me since I didnt have a lunch alot of times and never had money to buy lunch from the school. i never got to order things when they would send home those "book club" forms with all the cool new books that all the kids would order and read together, etc. I kept to myself alot cuz nobody related to wearin handmedowns and ridin to the school bus in the cargo area in the back of my moms mail delivery truck, which for a while was our only car, she owned it and drove it around....gettin dropped off the kids would be like WTF....Later on didnt have cable, didnt have a computer, a printer, i was stayin up all night writin my essays when other kids would type and print them out, just dumb shit like that all thru grade school.

I went to a 'alternative' school (charter school) when i hit 7th grade and went nutz witih the kids from the area who was like me and understood that life. seemed like it was a school just for kids like us, so i was chillin once i got there, got in trouble everyday, suspended, detention, constantly. But i loved it, all my friends was there with me. detention was like the cool kids after school club lol. once i found that group of kids school was alot better, alot of kids was from newark and paterson and had just moved up like i did when i was younger, we would talk about that type of shit, smoke outside the school during gym class, (Our school didnt have a gym so we would just go outside in the parkin lot for gym, or if it rained we would sit in a classroom and do "health" class which was, sittin around pretty much.)

7th n 8th grade i started tryin new drugs and shit like that, 9th grade was high school and all I remember is not wantin to talk to nobody except the dealers, cuttin classes to sit under the stairs and draw or listen to music, and knowin that I didnt give a fuck. By that time i was tired of it. I knew i could do good in school if i wanted to but by that time it was about homework not shit you did in class and i just didnt give enough of a shit to do it. for those 3 yrs i think i got steady F's and D's mostly, when i had been a straight A student up til 5th grade or so. I just stopped carin, i thought it was stupid, it was pointless, it wasnt the real world. The realizations this guy talkin about, how it really dont matter and its all useless, I was realizing this when i was 9 or 10 and thats why i just kept to myself mostly. But I never really fit into any type of category, if i was smart i didnt like to show it cuz i knew it could be used against me, rather let them think i dont know and just watch and listen. I always been like that I guess. I dont kno why I am ramblin on about this, but i really aint thought about school at all really, since 9th grade when i said fuck this and dropped the fuck out. nobody could PAY me to go back. I legally couldnt drop out til 10th grade, but do you think that stopped me no lol. So i guess I didnt really feel all the "torture" of high school I was more worried in jr high about this one broad always sayin she was gonna bring in her blade and knife me up becuz I had too much swagga and she didnt like my attitude. That was the type ish i worried in high school not no fuckin, hormones and nerds and popularity. It all ended cool tho, the bitch pushed me and i pushed back harder and later she ended up sayin i was her girl. The story ended good, i got the hell outta school and got a job and a dope habit and 6 years later im here...
 
Nice one, I've got an essay coming up on my mid-term. I like the way you organized your idea's. :)
hang in there Lacey, keep doing positive shit and you will show those son of bitches that your not a god damn plumber your an astronaut.
( I just wanted to add lacey, I was sent to an alternative school in high school for beating the shit out of a prep/jock ( head QB) and putting him in ICU. I got picked on in school because I have a handicapped brother. I turned to drugs and gangs to escape life. I got expelled from hoover high school because I pulled a knife on another shit fuck that made fun of me. I turned to gangs because I never knew my dad. I just wanted to be part of something. All the shit I did was down hill. After 2 years of gangbangin and a close friend of mine got killed in a drive by (he wasn't even in a gang) I decided to end this bull shit and do something. So I did, I got my GED passed it with a 410(lowest passing score) and went to college. I found out in college that no one gives a damn about you, your there for your self. Things are going good man. Keep shit real, and don't let no one tell you that they know what it feels like, fuck that shit. hang high playa.
 
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