1185 comments

• 

  Miriam

  2 weeks ago

  Dear author,
  having been a nerd for all my school time I've seen everything you described here but I could never explain the why. Meanwhile I've learned a lot about social psychology and educational science but I've never managed to meet someone who could rationalize to me the phenomenon of nerds in such a complete way you did in this essay. Thank you so much! I really adore you for it. Please allow me to quote extracts from it on any ocasion!
  Lots of Love, Miriam from Germany
  
  P.S. Be reassured that nerds are not only an american phenomenon. They exist in Europe too.
  reply
• 

  bluesky

  5 months ago

  This article helped me more than anyting else I have been looking for since past six months. People call me nerds all the time, especially those I thought were supposedly my friends. They called me teachers' pet and even nominated me in the yearbook for that. When I found myself into this covoluted maze trying ot gasp onto the mediocrity of the social life, i started devaulate my education and tried to be more popular by wearing new clothes and buying new shoes. This was totally a WRONG idea. My GPA has dropped due to my poor participation in classroom and lack of doing my homeworks. I have been working streneously for the past three years and being a valedictorian, I felt as if I earned nothing, only contept and mouthful of ridicules. However, this article had changed my life as I read it last night. Many of my past time stories storngly corelates what the author writes and it solved the knot that was entangled into my mind for such a long time. My suggesstions are to the nerds, are that never associate yourselves with the wrong crowds but consider yourself as smart by ignoring others and infact dont lose self-esteem and be yourself. At the end of the day, its you who will have to walk the road not them who are ridiculing your appearance or your lack of social participation in the lunchrooms. Now, after reading the article I feel that nothing has helped me better than these paragraphs the author wrote. I have learnt lesson, and others shoudl learn it as well. Thanks for your contribution. I believe it will help others just like me.
  reply
• 

  braktos

  5 months ago

  Blam, I've been suspecting this kind of thing for a while. Yesterday, I got told to shut up by this asshole who talks a lot and is a big athletic idiot. I hadn'y even talked 25% of his words and I got told to shut up. There has to be a rebellion, the top extroverts must be killed. The hyposrisy is that a smart kid who can't do the same thing as the dumb kid. I hate that kind of BS. It's the same as letting a person with an IQ of 80 pass gas anywhere just because he's extroverted and popular, yet the engineer who creates a monumental bridge has to fart in a designated zone (His own home) just because he isn't a sports star. When I went to Italy, there were no kids in the city. I only saw about 4 kids the entire time I was there, seriously, and I was there for a month. It was all either 40 year olds or college students. I've never seen a childless couple in the suburbs, the author is correct. The enitire list suburban somplexes of the world are meant to make kids. There's nothing in suburbia asides from houses, forest paths (if you're lucky), more houses, a community pool, which is run by lifeguards who are really just big kids that still have all the problems of regular kids. I'm a smart kid, I'm 15 and am taking an AP class. I'm passing with an 84%, and I don;t see how knowing how to graph a parabola helps you with a real job. Adults use computers for everything. I could go on and on, but I gotta stop now.
  reply
• 

  Dude

  4 months ago

  Hey guys time goes on but concept remains now I'm twice your age and guess what even if you don't wear specs and look good as soon as people know your
  smarter they 1st wanna kill you(if the right given) 2nd they wanna get read of you 3rdif they cant do the above mentioned and you continue to read they're thoughts they evade you or talk shit behind your back
  
  don't want to be your friend for sure.
  reply
• 

  joe

  5 months ago

  I absolutley love how tasteful and elegant the nerds are writing their comments, and then you will see one like " LOL, fuck u nerds, im totalie smary AND popular. lol rofl fuck lol peace" Really, how counter-productive can you be?
  reply
• 

  Kyle

  2 months ago

  YA.... I am like super smart, w/ a high IQ and Im in 3 AP's rite now, but I dont talk super formal like u guys do. Not ridiculing, just pointing it out. I guess what I mean is, I am a smart guy, who is semi-normal, but I prefer to act on my powerful emotions, from all the hormones. YET, I AM STILL A NERD!!!!! I think it is impossible to get ahead in the system. Essentially, people like u and me are years, maybe even a decade ahead of the humor, interests, and other such areas of life of the jocks. It is this, the mind of an adult in the body of a teenager, with other teenagers with the minds of teenagers, that makes life so shitty.
  reply
• 

  Robin

  5 months ago

  I read this a couple of years ago when things were truly horrible for my son. They have mellowed a bit but still not great. I wish there were points given for each time I said YES to a point in this essay. Obviously, my teenage years are ancient history, but the facts weren't any different a few decades earlier. Please extend my gratitude to the author. A Mom and Old Nerd :-)
  reply
• 

  Doesntmatter

  5 months ago

  I thank you for sharing this.
  reply
• 

  sarahwalker

  5 months ago

  ha ha! about time someone wrote something positive about being a nerd. this article was really enlightening, and offers fresh ideas.
  reply
• 

  Element99

  5 months ago

  Sadly, this article is also accurate in describing the breakdown that occurs in adult workplaces in the absence of strong leadership and tangible goals. In other words, the problem doesn't go away (but it becomes much easier to leave).
  
  Success of any organizational structure relies on three pillars: 1) adequate resources; 2) strong, responsible leadership; 3) worthwhile goals.
  
  In the absence of these three pillars, things start to degenerate quickly.
  reply
• 

  cody

  1 year ago

  Honestly Marco, you are oblivious. First of all, you obviously aren't one of the nerds or "smarter popular people" at your school. You use "your" instead of "you're", and "there" instead of "their". "Cause"... what is this, third grade? I am a nerd, take multiple AP classes, and am on varsity in sports; however, this does not change the fact that I am a nerd. The activeness in extracurricular activities does not decide who is a nerd...being more active just gives us more time to be mocked. The popular teenagers at my school only dabble in AP classes...two if they wish to be "daring". Having only two AP classes and A- in everything is incredibly less challenging than six AP classes with 98% in everything. I realize what you are. You are neither the nerd nor the "smart" popular teenagar. You are the middle-class rank that is in the lower fiftieth percentile, tearing down those below you in the social hierarchy.
  reply
• 

  tiffany

  1 year ago

  the first thing i thought about when i read your comment was 1 corinthians 8:2 (And if any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.)
  reply
• 

  Benthenerd

  1 year ago

  Hi, i am 14 (slap bang in the middle of my nadir) and i suppose i am a nerd (thats why i am typing this). I totally agree with your essay. I don't get bullied or anything, but life is a miserable peice of crap. Any effort to end up on the class A canteen table will be completly useless in the real world. So will doing well in tests or shining teachers apples. Whatever effort i make in any direction is pointless.
  The only thing to do is be bored, and wait it out. Another 3 years, it will drive me crazy. Anyway thats my inside opinion.
  
  On a more positive note you would think succesfull adults (who were once nerds)would atempt to change the system. I live in England and all i ever hear from them is "Try your best, don't do drugs... E.T.C". None of it means anything.
  
  From an economic point of view it would be a great advantage to ensure that supernerds get the best and quickest education possible, then throw them into the real world to exel at what they do. As for the dumber ones they would get almost no education and spend the rest of their lives doing the manual jobs that are currently reserved for teenagers. They could form a perfect society where everyone has his/her place.
  reply
• 

  B. Cooke

  1 year ago

  Hi, I totally stumbled upon this by accident (did you know that if you google "i have a very good girl, but sometimes she is not so good... if you know what i mean" this is the third result?) when I was trying to figure out what song the lyrics in a friend's msn name was from. I'm glad I did though, it was interesting to read. I agree with a lot (albeit not all) of what you said. I'm with you 100% on the public school system being awful and boring, a real waste of time, truly a place to hold kids until they're old enough to do something worth while... Nevermind the fact that the students aren't being taught anything useful. I also agree with you on the freaks. They do have a magical way of being baked out of their and scoring higher on a test than most of the class. The pot does make a bond. You are incredibly bitter in this though. I'm sure you realize that. Really though, there were no "good" popular kids at your school? I have to admit, I am in high school now and I am considered to be popular (class president, yearbook editor, etc., etc.) but I have never referred to myself as a "popular" kid although I do understand it is true (others have called me that awful "P" word). Although I would sit at an "A" table at your junior high school, I don't think I am at all how you described these popular kids to be. I am smart myself, I do well in my classes and tutor on weekends. I talk to everyone, not just the football team. For example, last weekend I hung out with the group you would call "freaks" and blazed... This weekend, I went to a "cool kid" party which got broken up by the cops, and the next night I went to the movies with the kids in my calculus class. Sersiouly, I had a great time with each of those groups, and I'm happy that I'm able to mix with them all. Really though, I think you should be telling these so called "nerds" to give the "popular" kids a chance... they are not so bad once you decide to stop resenting them.
  reply
• 

  mikedilv

  1 year ago

  I was always lost in the group between the nerds and the popular kids. At age 29, I put myself in the best physical condition of my life. The most beautiful women took an interest in me and came from at all sides. I can't remember what happened, but at one point I stopped exercising, my physique changed and the women stopped approaching me. I was the same guy but now I wasn't good enough? It made me realize their interest was never really about who I was inside. I was angry inside. I had worked very hard for 30 years by that time to be who I was and that wasn't good enough? My appraised value was based on sex appeal? Where would my life have gone if I had stuck with that group? Say I had married, had children and then cut back on my exercise? Would I have experienced a loss of peer friendships? Would my wife be faithful and still content with our marriage?
  Now, concerning education. Popularity ranks pretty low with the ability to make a positive impact in the lives of others. Granted there is the ability to get people's attention, exercise compassion, and provide some positive contribution. However, the more intelligence you and I can acquire, the greater impact we can have in the lives of others. A doctor can treat cancer. A lawyer can help people who have been wronged or injured. A scientist can create antibiotics. Popularity at the highest levels cannot do any of those things. People who make a positive difference will never be lonely, in my opinion. In my opinion, there are those who have passed on and still want to make a positive difference in our lives and are willing to be our silent, invisible, tutors in our education and career in making a positive impact in the lives of others. Close your eyes when you get frustrated with school and work and see if the words "Do it for others" don't come to mind and inspire you to sit back down and resume your work at a new level and possibly with a clear understanding of what you just struggled with moments ago. THAT is an incredible experience. That is one that will never be unfaithful, dramatic, etc. It is one that will always be positive. One from an intelligence that has a much larger picture of life and the world we live in and can best lead you to whatever positive desires you have, even if it is popularity. The only question you might be presented with is "What will you do with it? Will you use it for to make a positive impact?"
  reply
• 

  mikedilv

  1 year ago

  btw, forgot to comment on "Why would I want to make a difference in the lives of people who treat me poorly?" Look at society as a whole. There are over a billion people estimated to be on the earth. They don't all dislike you. Once you have your college degree, they will want and need you for your product and services. They will be dependent on you. In college, when they struggle with calculus, they will be in the math tutor center seeking your help, when their boyfriend(s) or girlfriend(s) are unable or do not have time. Long story short, if being a nerd means preferring to spend your time and money in the pursuit of intelligence than a muscular physique, expensive cars and clothing, and expensive haircuts, then be a nerd! Only 2-3 months ago I was an entertainment manager at a celebrity hotspot in Las Vegas. Every week we had celebrities and the "popular crowd." I wore $2000 suits, $200-300 ties, $200-$350 belts, $200 shirts, $200 jeans. I grew tired of it! I watched people work 2 or more jobs or work >40hrs/wk to afford to dress like that and spend $50-$200,000 on drinks and gratuity. (Yes, a particular individual would come in and spend $100k to $200k just on drinks for himself and anyone charismatic person who would drink with him) Now, I am a student at the University of Utah majoring in Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering. I wear cowboy boots, Wrangler jeans, $15 Walmart button down Wrangler brand shirts, and a John Deere hat. In my free time, I go for walks in wild land or at an equestrian park. Most of my time is spent in the math library at the university, however. My shirt pocket is always full of 3x5 cards, a mini recorder, and 2 pens. I don't fit in. But when I see people judge me, I laugh inside as I think how it would be different if I was back in my suit or $1000 jacket and $200 jeans. I laugh at how how much he or she has to learn about what is "real" in life and as to what is incredible. For me, what is real is being who YOU are and not what others think you should be. For me, that is the outdoors, horses, dogs, agriculture, and the pursuit of intelligence. If I ever remarry, I know I will be loved from the beginning for who I am and not how I look at the moment. That makes for a much more rewarding and secure relationship = what the popular kids are wanting but trying to get via charisma. Anyway, keep your chin up. You rule! If I can be of any further help, just ask.
  reply
• 

  fierymerengue

  1 year ago

  Wow...you definitely know a lot about the real world. Alright, I'm a teen that
  is going to be a freshman in high school pretty soon. All I really want is a
  guy best friend that I can relate with, someone real...not some sports-
  oriented group that just cares about girls, getting laid, or ostracizing nerds
  who aren't like them. How do I get that?
  The reason is, I think there's this person that has the potential to be a great
  friend of mine. But he has his own basketball/baseball crew, and I keep
  reminding myself I am not like him. Yet, I want to be around him. If you knew
  how much I wanted to be like a teenager right now, you would get it.
  How the hell do I beat the system? That's what I want to know. What is the
  single thing that will get you a bulls-eye, true relationship?
  reply
• 

  mikedilv

  1 year ago

  re: "How do I get a guy best friend that is real?" All my female best friends have been girls I was attracted to, flirted with, but could never get a first date with. They would do things with me, but would say "Let's definitely go to the movie, but I just need another really good friend right now. Cool?" They would also take an interest in my favorite interests. I was really into skateboarding in high school. My female friends never skated, but they at least pretended to be entertained by it :)
  
  But let’s say he isn’t interested in you, even if you take an interest in his basketball. I want you to then remember ice cream. Hehe. What I mean is I like ice cream with a bit of vanilla, chocolate swirl, chocolate covered peanuts, and peanut butter. I know guys who prefer Rocky Road, Mint Chocolate Chip, Oreo, Pralines n’ Cream, etc. Baskin and Robbins alone has 31 flavors! Now, have you ever ordered your favorite ice cream and looked at a friend’s and said “Hmm, that looks good, can I try it?” You then try it say “Wow! That is good. I wish I had gotten that one :(.”
  
  Here is the first point. Every guy out there (and girl, for the guys) is like an ice cream flavor. You see what’s in the case, but until you have experienced as many flavors as possible, you have no idea which is your favorite! All you can do is guess and make assumptions. So, my first recommendation is to not set your heart on a single guy until you have dated numerous types of guys.
  
  Second point, you are a flavor too and guys have no idea what they want either. They can look in the case and make a best guess, but until they have tried numerous flavors they have no idea which is their favorite. For guys, we have an additional complication. Our biological clock says “It’s time to reproduce, even if accidentally.” That really messes up our thinking skills, but the level of intensity varies from guy to guy.
  
  Realize too that if you have to act or dress in a different manner to get a guy, it is not worth it. To get a “real” relationship and/or friendship, you have to be you 100% from the very beginning. How long will that take? It wasn't until I was 23 and wow did I have an incredible marriage! Every other girlfriend before that, from age 12, was just a source of good times, followed by anxiety , followed by heartache, since I always wanted to go steady and not have open dating relationships. The lack of open dating was also the cause of my divorce. I had no idea what other flavors were out there and wondered if I had made the best choice. Now, 10 years later, I am saddened that to this day, I have yet to find another woman of her caliber who loves me in return like she did. I hope this all helps.
  reply
• 

  mikedilv

  1 year ago

  :) For those who say "I can't get the friends or the dates." I assure you, when you get to a university (not a community college), you will! It will be the first time you are in a peer environment where people are there for an education. At universities, intelligence is "in." Granted, there are the pretty people too, but they usually don't make it past the first year. Those who do, have a tremendous amount of respect for you, as you have proven you are just as tough if not tougher than they are in the academic challenges that their pretty peers failed at their first year. YOU will be the idols. When you earn your masters degree, the bachelor degree holders will be in awe at your level of comprehension as you will be in awe at the level of comprehension of the PhDs in your field.
  reply
• 

  fierymerengue

  1 year ago

  mikedilv...thanks a lot. Sometimes I feel different from other
  people (actually a lot), but now I feel that there's more out there
  for me. In regards to ice cream, you are right! Why should I
  stick around for vanilla and strawberry when New York Super
  Fudge Chunk could be around the corner? Lol.
  
  I also think that--when I get old enough, I haven't started dating
  yet--I'll have open dating. I should experience it all, not set
  my sight on one prospective person.
  
  Thanks a lot, again.
  reply
• 

  mikedilv

  1 year ago

  Hopefully we help people who are looking for answers, due to being picked on in school. K-12 kids are ruthless. Community College is a little better. University students rock! The campus and student body are FAR too big to develop any "cool kid" "nerd kid" groups. There, everyone is just a student, even the professors, and range in age from 18 to 88 or older. The bullies soon realize they are powerless without their bully peers and that they look absolutely immature if they attempt to mock anyone. People will look at them as if to say "Are you serious? Did you just mock that guy? What, are you 5?" And like I said, university campuses are far too big for anyone to even take a moment to think someone is a nerd.
  reply
• 

  A

  2 months ago

  mikedilv, your idea that basically everyone in university is happy and fits in is a wrong one. I'm not trying to deflate anyone's hopes but the vast majority of people in college are not good looking. So even if most people in university "get dates", it's not necessarily what you imagine it to be.
  reply
• 

  john

  1 year ago

  Great Article, but who is the author so that credit can be given where it is due?
  reply
• 

  Robert

  1 year ago

  That was a hell of an essay there.... Well thought out. I had already come to many of these conclusions but never in such a cohesive manner. Your essay, as I already said, is fantastic.... Why don't you write a book?
  reply
• 

  shane

  1 year ago

  Hey, I just typed why into google and this came up, im definatly very glad I read it, although I cannot fully relate to it.
  
  I am from Australia and currently in Year 10, and in my school it seems that the most popular people are infact smart people. Maybe they use their intelligence to realise what it takes to become popular, or maybe they are just multi talented and naturally popular (yes, naturally popular, it is possible).
  
  Thanks for the great essay.
  reply
• 

  ~Rosygirls92~

  1 year ago

  I'm in total agreement with you Shane. Funnily enough.. I'm also in year 10 attending a selective school. The most popular kids there are actually the most nerdist ones while the good-looking ones come second. Maybe it's because of our society or our teachers. Either way the smart factor is a huge boost in the popularity scale.
  -This essay was great. I'd love to read more of your work!!
  reply
• 

  Qes

  1 year ago

  I TOO just typed "why" and got this.
  
  A good google search, to be sure.
  -Qes
  reply
• 

  jsyedidia

  1 year ago

  I went to high school with Paul, and also worked at Viaweb. I commented on my own experience at Gateway High School in my blog at http://nerdwisdom.com/2007/08/13/gateway-high-s....
  
  Jonathan Yedidia
  http://nerdwisdom.com (as you can see, I'm proud to be a nerd!)
  reply
• Comment removed.
• 

  Michael

  1 year ago

  I'm not sure how to comment on this essay as I come from England and our school way of life now and back when I attended was and still is much different to that of the USA. You have popular kids but there is no definitive line between popular and unpopular with bullying being a very rare thing in high schools today. I have never heard of anyone commited suicide or contemplating it as a result of school life. At parties over here there is a mixture of popular and your normals but by popular I don't mean they are special or sporting heroes just socially more adept and charisma. At school I was never a popular kid but over here its not such a big thing to the extent of having it constantly on your mind night and day. Nowadays I've heard stories that popular kids just sit on benches chatting or playing the odd game of football (soccer) at lunch picking on anyone but nothing major and just for that one minute of the day. Schools in England involve 85% of school children being socially capable of holding a conversation on their own and children in schools from very different backgrounds get on with everyone else on the school and over here you are liked for yourself and not whether you are the soccer team etc.
  
  Much more to say on the matter so keep your eyes peeled.
  reply
• 

  Jess

  1 year ago

  I'm actually not in agreement with your arguement, where I am and in many schools I've been too there are popular students who are smart and slightly less smart unpopular kids...and it wasnt a minority either...on average I am fairly good at school and fairly *without meaning to brag but...* "popular"...it isn't fair to sterotype people...its unfair and unjust...and its really long to read =P
  reply
• 

  James

  1 year ago

  i like it. this jess person says she is in disagreement, but that is because many people have different situations in life. obviosly school is going to be different for all of us, and it seemed like you were just stating the worst of situation. i liked it though, it helped me look at my high school life right now and see how what you described is still partly true.
  reply
• 

  Jay

  1 year ago

  Comments like "stop rambling on" or "it's so long to read" are meaningless and should be cast aside. I was something of a "nerd" (though not totally an outcast) in high school and found this essay to be almost 100% spot on. But whether you agree or disagree how long it took you to read it is really irrelevant.
  reply
• 

  Reader

  1 year ago

  Darn! The Cliff's Notes summary isn't out yet. ;)
  reply
• 

  Moz

  1 year ago

  I enjoyed your essay. I would say, though, that you missed a point regarding school hierarchies. The problem lies in the pubertal transition to adulthood for us monkeys. Nothing aggravates a physically adult twelve year old more than being put in his place intellectually by a tiny, squeaky-voiced child (albeit of the same age). Once the first few kickings for being "teacher's pet" have been handed out, the rest of school is pretty much predetermined. Large, violent - will excel at sports, and therefore will spend a lot of time doing sports, rather than reading. Small, weedy - will never be picked for anything, and will therefore have lots of free time to read and write, and do Jenkins' homework for him - deliberately incorrectly, because the fear of Jenkins' violence is always trumped by the immense satisfaction of seeing Jenkins transferred to a remedial class. (And subsequently, the ability to ask Jenkins to super-size my meal).
  
  If I had my time at school again, I'd be a nerd again. Teenage girls are immensely boring.
  reply
• 

  Brian

  1 year ago

  "Teenage girls are boring"? HA HA yet another geek who failed to get a date! The point of teen girls isn't to be interesting or boring, the point is that they are at the height of beauty, only surpassed by freshman girls.
  And "will have lots of free time to read and write" ?? You act as if reading is something to kill time with, instead of something with which to increase the scope of your world. If you were a nerd, you couldn't have been a very smart one.
  reply
• 

  TW

  1 year ago

  You have a mix of both good valid points with a couple of simplistic bad ones.
  It is tribalism but intelligence is not the defining variable. I have know very smart populars and some very dumb nerds. The arrogance of the nerd tribe to assume that it's about smarts is one of the reasons why they get disdain even in the adult world, just behind their backs after they trouble shoot the office mainframe instead of to their face. It comforts them by thinking it's envy of their brains and that illusion gets them through the day. Nerds just have very specific attributes that give them high reward for low effort in specialized fields. They do not have many social skills because they do not require them. The survival fire is not under their buts enough to motivate them into the effort of it. Technology has created a niche they can be very comfortably successful in.
  School is a primitive emulation of the adult social politics. It gets more subtle and refined as we get older but it never goes away. Every one chooses whether they realize it or not that they take the path of most reward for least effort optimizing their talents and skills. They go where the results are. In the wheat from chaff process over the long term many nerds get left by the wayside as much as dumb jocks, empty beauties and shallow populars do.
  And it is a given that the nerd tribe breaks down into sub groups with their own status ranks.
  reply
• 

  Perseustrue

  1 year ago

  Intelligence may not have been the defining variable for you. Paul notes that the A-C,E tables were defined by other qualities (conformism, athleticism, nihilism, and yes wealth).
  
  School is a 'limited" emulation of adult social politics. In this Paul is exactly right. In the real world the A through D tables are so large you can choose to almost exclusively associate with the type of people you prefered in school. When you feel uncomfortable as an adult it is because you have been forced to deal with people you did not like in school.
  reply
• 

  Steve

  1 year ago

  I live in a far-away country in Europe, so in the school that I graduated from some details were slightly different, as is to be expected in another country with another language, etc. Nevertheless, when reading this article I felt as if I were, mutatis mutandis, reading about my own school. Excellent insights.
  reply
• 

  Ally

  1 year ago

  I can't say that I agree with you on this. At my school we don't really have much of a problem with that. Nearly everybody gets along, and the line between "popular" and "unpopular" isn't the same as being a "nerd" or just average. It's how you treat people. I have yet to meet a really nice, considerate person from my school that is considered unpopular. To tell you the truth, most of the popular people at my school are actually very smart. There are always the ones who think they're better than everybody else, but those people are generally the ones who are considered popular because they've got money. I am from from Canada, and maybe people are nicer in general, but not everybody is like that. I'm one of those kids who are somewhat popular, but not one of the elite group. I've never been picked on in my life, and I've never worked on being popular. People react to how you act towards them. If I was one of the rudest people around I would most definitely be shunned. Anybody would! You have a good argument though, and I think you did a good job of speaking your mind. It's a very good essay, I just don't agree with the point you are trying to make.
  reply
• 

  Taylor

  1 year ago

  I'm in an Australian high school, year 9, and I completely agree with you. Apart from being from another country, this is exactly how my school is - painful and pointless.
  reply
• 

  Chelsizzle

  1 year ago

  I'm very sorry you were thought as a nerd.
  I feel really bad for you actually.
  Im a sophmore in high school.
  And i make fun of all the nerds at our school all the time.
  But i don't care because im not one of them.
  reply
• 

  Perseustrue

  1 year ago

  What doesn't kill you makes you strong. Thank you for helping your future bosses learn this early.
  reply
• 

  Kyle T.

  1 year ago

  I'm a "nerd" i guess, but I study for no tests, but still manage to ace most, or at least pass all. Either way, the only few people who thought they were good enough to pick on me met my friendly nieghbor, the floor. The "popular" kids, were always real popular after they got their ass kicked during english class, or during P.E.
  
  It's fun, because being the so called "nerd" and being small, also makes me immune to almost all punishment. "He started it, I defended myself, why would i try to fight someone twice my size?" and I'm off. Small people have more fighting experiences then you could ever image, not to mention the speed to back it up, and maybe not pure muscle compared to you, but in comparison to body size, they most likely have more then you.
  reply
• 

  Paperface

  1 year ago

  This was a great read. Very detailed and well thought out. I'd have to agree with many of your points but you also seemed to miss a few things. All and all, it was well thought out and probably better than any piece of writing I could ever produce. Thanks for this.
  
  p.s. I think it's pretty funny reading all these high school kid's comments like, "I'm popular AND smart in my high school so your essay is wrong and I don't agree with it." It's not really about your or his experience through school, there's much much more to it than that.
  reply
• 

  Lisa

  1 year ago

  As a sophmore in highschool , this article was very well written
  
  You could be smart and attractive/popular, however, that is one of the hardest roles to play and manage in highschool, because you want to maintain a balance without messing up anything on either side, unfortunately, at this point, popularity is more important for most people, although smart people won't be shunned, nerds/socially awkward people will be out of the circle.
  
  One thing I think is the hardest for smart people is that they realize the system. They see through it when other people can't, they know thing other people can't relate to and that makes it all the more depressing when you realize you're among the few who's in the know about how pointless school is at times but you can't beat the system. Especially the social pressure which before you and everyone else was numb to but then you see how pointless and consuming it is and yet no one ever questions it.
  
  It's just a big, fake circle with no sense of reality, and I feel I'm just walking in an infinite loop until I graduate, the good thing is seeing kids who you know if they stick it out for a few more years, the roles will be dramatically reversed.
  
  They always tell us that the real world is alot more harsher, scarier and worse than school. I don't think so.
  reply
• 

  Nakeisha

  1 year ago

  I live in Greece. I go to the High school.Here the nerds are treated badly,but they have no real problem with anybody.The ones who face an earthy inferno everyday are the outlandish,weird-looking ones,the gay's,the non-stylish ones and the people who dress goth and emo.
  I am facing many problems,because of my Asian descent and the distinctive way of dressing and walking.
  reply
• 

  Anonymous

  1 year ago

  I'm a girl in an English Secondary school. I found your article spot on for myself, though I don't get picked on by many guys because I'm a girl, and other girls are either afraid of me, my friend, or don't care less. I hope it stays that way. It also helps that I'm tall, but I think I've stopped growing now.
  Thanks for the information. Knowing this from somebody who's been through that to the real world, I can walk through the school social scenes with confidence that it won't affect me in the real world, although I've always known that, sort of consciously.
  You keep saying that such barbaric situations are "back then" - but it's still like that, and I doubt it'll change any time soon.
  reply
• 

  Jason

  1 year ago

  This is one of the most clear, valuable indictments of our public schools that I have ever had the privilege of reading. Thank you for writing it, and I hope to spread this, and hopefully in the long run bring about change (I've been thinking about it for years).
  
  Just as a ray of hope, there are private schools that are not as empty, and provide structure and growth for the students enrolled there. If we could simply model public schools on successful private schools, we would be well on the way to remedying the situation you have so ably described.
  reply
• 

  jodie

  1 year ago

  Popularity has nothing to do with our lives in the future. Usually those who are popular at school end up in crappy jobs, on the street, involved in drugs, whatever. What we need to remember is that one day we could be working for that nerd that you bagged out all the way through their schooling!!! Give them a break people!!! These poeple could save our lives one day, but all you have done is destroy their child hood!!!
  reply
• 

  Jessica

  1 year ago

  I'M FROM AUSTRALIA!!!!! In my schhol nerds are people who talk about work n nothing else n they dont takl about new trends and new music etc But being smart is not bad at all as long as u can sosialise and go with the flow. I'm reaally smart in maths, in writing stories in art and in drama and in sport and I have never been called a nerd. I'm just normal among my friend and I fit in well.
  Overall I wreckon u can be smart n kool and that its reaally easy.hOPE PEOPLE CAN REPLY TO DIS!
  reply
• 

  anon

  1 year ago

  i totally agree wid u on dat 1
  @ mi skool im sorta in da middle but there r still major populartity issues
  reply
• 

  pete

  1 year ago

  in my school in the UK i used to be a nerd. i thought it was the uncool place to be, but life was still good. personally i belive at that time i had no self confidece and i admit, i didn't care. now only a few mounths on, i have risen considerably on the popularity scale. i realise that the only reason i got laughed at, was that i was the only person some people cood laugh at, so i belive they were in a worse place than i was. i wasn't trying and didn't care about failing,. they tried too hard, and ended up with people thinking they were an idiot, whereas everyone just thought i was a geek
  reply
• 

  Kelly

  1 year ago

  This essay is brilliant. It sounds really familiar and helps a lot- thank you! It's a fake and superficial world; high school, yet people keep repeating that it's supposed to be "the best time of your life". It may be a very important time, but it doesn't make it easier. It's absolute hell sometimes.
  reply
• 

  Jonathon

  1 year ago

  This is so so true. And I think it still holds today, even if you don't overly.
  reply
• 

  Nerd

  1 year ago

  I cannot believe that at last I have found someone who shares my views.
  reply
• 

  William

  1 year ago

  Interesting article, but I do have a couple of bones to pick.
  
  I'm not sure how I feel about the dismissive tone about popular stuff being "dumb"-- while it wasn't academic in nature, surely, my "quest for popularity" was anything but stupid, I think. I started out as a nerd (but my school was in Canada, which I am learning makes it weird-- there was a provincial instead of local hierarchy, most schools had a 'magnet'-- mine was gifted kids and an auto shop, while down the road was high-performance athletes, and another had art/drama, and another was for kids who struggled with school... you get the idea. They all still had the regular, 'local' kids, but then a huge displaced chunk of kids coming from across the city for one specific thing. But I digress) and worked my way up. I mostly did this by getting really nerdy about 'cool' things-- music, comedy, things like that. I still played plenty of video games, but I was listening to an amazing band that nobody at school would hear of for months. People would occasionally attempt to ostracize me or tease me, but I'd become confident enough that I was able to brush them off like I meant it (having a good zinger comes in very handy for this). Hell, I got a pair of stylish glasses in my junior year and some clothes that didn't look like they were from a department store (in retrospect, they probably WERE from a department store) and ended up dating one of the most sought-after girls at school! Then again, I was lucky in that nerdiness was kind of 'cool' in the early 2000s. I just exploited that fact really, really well.
  
  That kind of leads me into my next point, which is that nerdiness is becoming chic. Yeah, we've heard it a million times, for sure. But I remember my last year of high school as virtually run by former nerds-- there was my friend M, who was the only kid our grade wearing punk shirts to school in grade 9 and was made fun of for his weight throughout, who became incredibly charming and school president in his last year. There was me, who talked about final fantasy and wore sweatpants, but at some point got a clue and turned into the hilarious guy everyone wanted to hang out with on breaks. My friend G was, well, one of my best friends, and he grew about 6 inches one summer and stopped talking funny and started looking pretty good, so he was a shoe-in.
  
  I forget where I was going with this. Oh yeah... my point: there were kids who were nerds and freaks at the beginning of school who became the 'cool' kids by the end of school. It wasn't because they sold out and picked on other people; it was because they realized that the two important aspects of popularity are mass appeal and confidence. Once you realize the first, you recognize that virtually everyone has the potential to have mass appeal-- if you're not sporty, you can be charming, or funny, or badass, or whatever else you can think of. And once you realize what you can exploit, the confidence follows. And if that kind of reasoning isn't nerdy enough for you, I'm not sure I know what nerd even means any more.
  reply
• 

  Ihatewilliam \/

  1 year ago

  Nice article. I was a nerd in school, but now I'm a lot richer than any of the football and lacrosse players. Honestly, getting through high school as a nerd is easy as long as you keep thinking that you will kick their ass in real life
  reply
• 

  Stereotypical Asian Nerd

  1 year ago

  Your article is very interesting. It has some very good points however, I believe that the nature of American Public Schools are changing for the better in respect to the nerd community. Even though I am a nerd, I am also a Navy brat (I moved frequently). As I began my Freshman year in High School, I was picked on often by the Seniors however, not nearly as much by people who were younger. Not only this, but after my Freshman year, it seemed as though being a nerd somehow came with popularity. I have no idea how, or why, but things seemed to be changing for the better. In fact, the social ineptitude seems to be deemed "cute" by girls. It seems as though the new generation has brought a new outlook and a new system. The lowest rank on the popularity scale seems to be the less intelligent.
  
  Bullying still exists however, its not as bad as people who come from the preceding generation say it is. I'm a Senior this year, and from what I've seen nearly all of my fellow nerds have also seen little to none teasing or bullying. What seems to stay consistent is the very top of the spectrum. Kids who are rich, on the football team, or simply "hot" (as girls put it) continue to rule the school. Nerds, in their eyes, are simply losers.
  reply
• 

  someone

  1 year ago

  WOW, that was great! i am curently writing a college essay about popularity and you gave me a totaly different view! thanx
  reply
• 

  hey.

  1 year ago

  I think this article makes a lot of sense. I totally agree with everything it said and I just want to say that nerds shouldn't view themselves as nerds... because everyone needs to see themselves in a higher outlook. I see nothing wrong with nerds and actually enjoy their company a lot more than the 'popular kids.' I absolutely love this article, and it puts everything into perspective from the actual eye of someone from a public school. Thanks for writing this and just getting it out there.
  reply
• 

  Jim

  1 year ago

  I was a bully in school but I like nerds. The popular guys are usually dumb.
  reply
• 

  JT

  1 year ago

  Brilliant. I only wish I'd have read this a decade before, the following years wouldn't have seemed so bad.
  reply
• 

  Icelander

  1 year ago

  In a word, wow. I really liked this article. It showed me a view of teenage lives and social dividing that I not seen before. I'd like to write a whole lot more, but I will spare you from the boredom. I would however like to write about this article in one of my school assignments and I hope you don't mind.
  reply
• 

  help

  1 year ago

  opinionated type of essay
  reply
• 

  Tracy Cousins

  1 year ago

  why do you feel this way? were you a nerd or a popular kid in school, mybe you dont understand one side or the other.
  reply
• 

  Susanne

  1 year ago

  Amazing article. You touched on some of the undercurrents in my own high school where some of the popular kids WERE the smart kids, but they also were the kids who would go out drinking on the weekends. The "good" smart kids were definitely in a lower eschalon of popularity because we didn't get smashed at parties every week.
  
  But also what you wrote confirmed our decision (our kids' decision, mostly) for our home education program. Our kids learn what will promote a good merge into adult culture. My oldest loves to write, so she writes. My oldest boy loves to create and plan and draw, so he creates and plans and draws. Yes, they have the typical academic courses, but as they teach themselves, they motivate themselves. I'm there to faciliate and guide their learning.
  
  They also have the opportunity to join in a more adult world as they volunteer their time in possible work scenarios that may end up being their life's work. My sophomore daughter teaches other homeschooled kids, and she loves it; she may have found her future in education. She also volunteers for our town's newspaper, so journalism may be in her future also. Because of home education, she has the time to pursue her own interests as well as complete solid academic work including the study of Latin, her own choice.
  
  When I taught at the university level, I could see some of the "nerds" coming out of their shells as they accessed a more adult world. Yes, the "popular" people still existed, but there were enough nerds around for them to join together and find their niche in university life. I hope that this phenomenon starts to unravel during the more independent college years, if not during the junior high and high school years themselves. It's just so sad to know that many children suffer needlessly this way. The damage must be immense.
  reply
• 

  Tracy Cousins

  1 year ago

  And the strange thing is, this nightmare scenario happens without any conscious malice, merely because of the shape of the situation.
  
  
  This statement above made me upset, yes they do set out to do it on purpose, I was not the most smartest in school, but I certainly didnt have to work hard to get good grades, my problem was people thought I was weird. I hope one day I can find an article like yours to explain and relieve some stress for being the weird kid. It helped me a little but not a lot, I didnt have the oh so sad life of being in a suburb, most of my life was in the inner city hoods of beautiful california, and the downtown mess. I didnt have a mom that liked to dress her pretty daughter nice, and she was cruel and sick minded, and then came the other adults, then the kids, like I dont remember the kids hurting me that much, because the adults ripped me apart before they ever could. It was mostly the adults in my life that wanted me to have the pain of the nerds you spoke of, and the kids just followed along. My mother hated me, so my brothers did, then my brothers made other kids hate me, and now I see how such behavior could start, you let me know how bullies really think, sadly my biggest bully was my mom.
  
  Thank you for your article, and I'm glad I did a little more healing.
  reply
• 

  John

  1 year ago

  In eastern Europe intelligence was considered a very good point and high class and so-called "nerds" usually were dumb and ugly as opposed to United States nerds. All the most popular people in EE were highly educated, smart and usually physically fit as well. Eve those who were in the weak side but smart were very popular. Well, except of a small group of dumb blondes, who everyone laughed at and some "criminal element" usually a couple guys in the class. In USA looks are more important than education that is why your country is lagging behind in intelligence far away behind such countries like Cuba, Russia, Eastern Euope (not a country) etc. even if our economies weere a mess, now they are improving along with high quality of education, not necessarily all posh looking schools, but the education itself makes people think.
  reply
• 

  Julie

  1 year ago

  This article may be correct in some ways but i disagree with a large part of it. The smart kids in my school tend to hang out because they are all in the same classes. They are all in advanced classes. However, most of them also hang out with many other groups of kids. The majority of the smart kids at my school are not nerds.
  reply
• 

  Nem

  1 year ago

  Wow!
  I just googled 'why' because I felt like I wanted to hear an answer to some random question I didn't ask.
  This article came up, its awesome!
  
  I'm from Australia, but I can definately relate.
  I love how simple, clear and accurate this essay is.
  reply
• 

  david

  1 year ago

  I just typed in why aswell!
  this article is amazing and definetly sums up school life
  I'm from ireland and the social system in my school seems very similar to your schools
  
  (by the way I am in 2nd year or 14th grade i think)
  reply
• 

  Elias G. Amaral da Silva

  1 year ago

  Fantastic essay. I occasionally crawl here looking for arc news; I have some ideas about mixing ML ideas in arc but I didn't suggested anything yet, and still don't having an open source alpha implementation isn't very motivating. (Actually /you/ made me learn lisp and want to start a startup, but that's another story).
  
  Here in Brazil, at least in my school I didn't saw much of this bullying and outcasting, it's weaker here. Bullies are often recognized as plain evil, even to other children. But I think you are right: schools works as a prison, just because kids have no use. And I started reading this article believing this was the only way.
  reply
• 

  student #542444 From MN, USA

  1 year ago

  wow, this a very nice essay.
  i can see how it got kids attention from around the world.
  nice judgements.
  reply
• 

  Stixx

  1 year ago

  That was a great article.
  I'm currently considering my status as a would be customer service representative and wondering if I'm actually a nerd.
  I was a "freak" in high school, always wore black and sure, I had connections with the so called "dorks" in high school as well. I'm currently unemployed and have been for about a year and a half and I'm just about ready to re-enter the workforce so I've been searching for an identity that I can hold on too as I re-enter the "real world".
  I'm 25 and living in the suburbs again with my parents and I can tell you, it'a a bit of a nightmare. This place is deserted. TAKE ME BACK TO THE CITY!
  Ahhh well, If you're reading this you're probably wondering if I have a point to make.....well, I don't!
  HAHA!
  Have a nice day.
  reply
• 

  M3...

  1 year ago

  kudos to the person that wrote this. I myself am in ap classes and am enrolled in the international baccaularate program and my social life is amazing. I basically talk to everyone in the school, because here we dont have clicks. Sure we have "nerds" but even they must be popular if everyone knows who they are. There popular for being nerds. Just like popular kids are popular for being popular.
  reply
• 

  Hannah, 15, England

  1 year ago

  Fantastic article. I'm 15 and I go to a High School in England, a comprehensive so you get all sorts... I was in the "Popular Crowd" in Year 7 (11 and 12 year olds), I don't know how I got there - I guess I just got on with popular kids. But I hated it.
  
  You constantly feel you have to keep up and image, and as soon as you laugh "too loud", or make a fool of yourself it's seen as scandal.
  But I didn't know where else to go, all my friends were in the popular crowd.
  
  Then we were mixed up for subjects such as maths and science, and in top set I met other people as none of the popular crowd was in top set. Of course there were nerds in our class, but there were also...(excuse the word) normal people, interesting people, who made real conversation, instead of meaningless gossip. I loved it, and made some amazing friends.
  
  I suppose now me and my friends would be...about B or B- in the popularity scale.
  I could never go back to the popular crowd, because I'm now an outcast from that group. But I'd never want to go back there.
  
  Your article triggered a lot of memories for me :) Thanks for posting it.
  Whoa, my comments almost as long as your article so I'll end it on this - When describing popular kids, all you can say is "They're popular". Popular with who? Their friends. Does make everyone popular? No of course not. So why are they described as popular? Because without their popularity they have nothing else.
  reply
• 

  Hannah

  1 year ago

  I have disagree with some things in this article. I'm often classified as a nerd/geek in school, but I'm also quite popular. You see, even if you are a nerd, once people take the time to know your personality, that determines your popularity. Often the nerds that are at the bottom of the popularity diamond seclude themselves so that people cannot get to know them. You might ask, "But why are the mean teens often popular?" They are only popular among themselves. They try to act better than everyone else, but it only gains approval form others like them and those that are too insecure to discern character.
  
  I'm being very blunt here, but for years I have been observing the way people act, etc. I figured that I might as well share my knowlegde.
  reply
• 

  Bobbi - UK

  1 year ago

  Wow, you make so much sense! In my school I was a nerd, or "boffin" as they are called over here, and now I am one of the intelligent drama geeks, which is better but not great. I have never really cared about what other people think, except my friends, because they know me better than anyone else, and I think that is one of the most important things to remember in high school/ secondary school, always make sure you are happy in both your intelligence and social status. Thanks for your time, and I love the article! -x-Bobbi-x-
  reply
• 

  Marco

  1 year ago

  I go to a really good High School and honestly nerds aren't smarter then the cool kids.
  If you really think nerds are smarter and the popular cool kids are dumb then your wrong.
  I used to be on the Basketball team and now I am on the Track And Field team in my high school and I am in honors.
  Many "nerds" are in Honors, but in regular also.
  Nerds aren't that smart, plus I rather be on a sports team with a 91+ average and have a nice social life rather than being a nerd. A nerd with a 93+ no athleticism, and almost no extra-curricular activities except for chess team.
  Why aren't nerds popular? Cause they aren't that much smarter then the "cool kids", they talk to themselves a lot, start conversations with random people about random stuff... Example:
  Me: Hi
  Nerd: Oh hi, yeah so I can finally kick my brothers ass in Halo 3..."
  Me: Um Okay cool bye.
  Okay maybe I started that one but you get the point.
  Also even geeks some of 'em have like 98+ AP classes averages and such AND DO SPORTS, they also have a good social life...
  Nerds are more of the fat kids who snort when they laugh and such.
  reply
• 

  Kristina

  1 year ago

  I agree with Cody on this. Marco, you are ridiculous. The grammar, aside from what Cody pointed out, was atrocious and quite honestly made me recoil. Being in "honors" does NOT take work. At all. All it takes to be in honors is be a student who isn't drunk every weekend. I am a nerd, which simply means that my IQ is a higher number than you can probably count to. I'm not UNpopular, but I am by no means "popular." And guess what? I'm not fat, and I don't snort when I laugh, thank you very much. I think you need to stick to your sports and stop capitalizing random words.
  reply
• 

  Bored Nerd

  1 year ago

  Interesting thing I realized: Marco uses terrible grammer and types in all caps because he hasn't bother to fit in with the sort of people who regularly chat on Internet comment boards. He's too busy being popular in school to avoid being socially awkward online.
  The difference is that there's a reason to fit in online. It comes naturally from practice, and online culture makes you smarter. not myspace of course, but in general finding articles like this and arguing about them is useful. You can always leave the game, or be a passive observer. And the society is far from a closed bubble, of course.
  So then, why are there people as abusive as Marco? why would those who fail at being acceptable online be in any position to bully? I think it's a habit. good luck picking on the nerds on the Internet, you'll drown in reasoned debate.
  by the way kristina, you're as wrong as he is. jocks aren't all stupid, and honors takes dedication. You fit in online quite well, because of your experience and intelligence, and so you bully less intelligent people who are awkward online.
  nerds bullying jocks...ain't the Internet great?
  reply
• 

  DDR

  1 year ago

  As you say, the school society does not have the power to change things other than locally. Therefore, I would expect a great deal of variation from region to region, geographically and economically. This is a very good essay!
  
  I get that "yeah... that sounds right..." feeling.
  reply
• 

  bobwazzi

  1 year ago

  Very interesting. I agree much.
  reply
• 

  frosty

  1 year ago

  Woah, this stuff is a bit hard for me to comprehend, but I understood most of it. I too personaly do not relate to this, but it does have some major points that seems true. hehehe, I serously like the part when you said "who wouldn't drop thirty points in exchange for being loved and admired by everyone?" that really got me thinking.
  reply
• 

  foreclosers

  1 year ago

  I suppose the one point about nerds that could be brought out more is their naivete. I remember actually singing in class in high school to impress people with my songwriting ability. This was not a music class. I was intelligent, but I lacked foresight. Nerds have real deficiencies that compound the problem of unpopularity. I suppose all teenagers are naive, in their own specialized ways.
  reply
• 

  foreclosers

  1 year ago

  Forgive me if this appears twice, my terminal shut down on me. Basically, I'd like to testify to the naivete of high school nerds. I remember one time I actually thought I'd impress my classmates with my songwriting ability (which is something I've been almost equally naive about after high school). So I sang a song to them in class. Not a music class. Furthermore it was inspired by a particular girl in that class. I cannot blame that on anyone but myself.
  reply
• 

  Vicky

  1 year ago

  That was interesting, I do have to agree with a lot of you're saying. But I've lead my life as a popular kid who got invited to every party and managed to study and get the top grades. Maybe I'm naive and people will disagree with me, but I truly believe that if you treat people equally and appreciate everyone you become popular. It worked for me, I guess because I never fealt the need to make fun of someone or put them down, on the oposite, it made me extremelly happy when I cheared someone up or helped out.
  I guess I just want to say, being yourself and out there is extremelly important. Don't just limit yourself to one friend group, try out different things, don't be scared to fail and you'll make lots of new friends and be invited to many parties and feel loved and popular:-) thanks for reading.
  reply
• 

  anonymous

  1 year ago

  I agree all the way.. when i was a kid, i stayed about medium in popularity. first i was a nerd, then slowly pulled my way up...
  pretty hard and harsh, mind. at football, i was always embarrased at being one of the last ones, but id look real dumb wandering around on the field.
  part of it, i found out, is racism...
  reply
• 

  dan

  1 year ago

  well i do agree but to be honest i think kids judge by actoins. see theirs this kid who is like 6 ft 2 inches or so in our 7th grade class and know1 sat next to him. i was knew to the school and they warned me about it. know i stay in the averge popular. i dont want to be so so popular because then alot of people talk about 1 mistake u made. but i think if u do sports u get alot of regonitoin.but thier are smart kids in my class and we popular kids dont pick on them.well i dont know about public but i go to private. we picked on the guy who is different. and we useto pick on this kid who was always getting F,s and forgeting homework.well i dont know i guess in a private school is different.
  reply
• 

  dan

  1 year ago

  also if u make fun of nerds u get alot of kids liking u. it depends how u are i mean like if ur a kid in 7th grade dating u are pretty popular. and also depends how u act up because if ur new u have to make a first impressoin. dont let guys trash talk u but try to listen what they say and do what they say but the worst thing if ur knew is being nosey.
  reply
• 

  Lloyd A. Conway

  1 year ago

  Sir:
  You write as if you knew me in school. At my 20th reunion, a woman, whom I didn't recognize, walked up to me and said, "I'm so sorry for what we did to you." I'll spare the details of those dark years, as you've outlined them in your essay; all I could add would be the particulars of my situation.
  Based on my experiences, I have a lifelong hatred of bullies, utmost respect for folks like John McCain who were POWs, and a strong dislike of planning, utopianism, and ideology. I hope that the homeschooling movement helps to deschool society (to borrow Ivan Illych's phrase), and that the utter failure of our schools, in an era of shrinking budgets, will lead to their collapse, a la the Velvet Revolution that swept away Communism in Eastern Europe. Thank you for the public service you've done by so eloquently identifying the root causes of the problem with American public secondary schools: purposelessness and boredom.
  -Lloyd A. Conway
  P.S. Parochial schools are different, I think. Where my wife teaches, they do have a mission, the kids learn, and they're a pretty happy lot.
  reply
• 

  Anonymous

  1 year ago

  the essay was great!!!!!!!
  
  but i'm a straight A student and i'm popular so i don't understand why other smart people can't be popular
  
  Hhhmmm!!!!!!
  reply
• 

  Andrew

  1 year ago

  uh hey vicky is a *girl*... and i assume the rest are mostly guys? this may just be a speculation of mine (which is likely to be true), but i really reckon that when it comes to being smart AND unpopular, guys clearly have an *upper hand * AND *do much better*!
  reply
• 

  Cheryl

  1 year ago

  Getting good grades does not make you a nerd. Especially if you are taking standard classes and the nerds are in advanced ones. It always annoyed me when I was in trigonometry and got a B while someone in basic algebra got an A and made Honor Roll because of it. Grades have nothing to do with intelligence or nerdiness. Also, my friends and I often made poor grades because we just didn't care. We weren't being challenged in class, and were bored, so didn't bother with homework. We also got in trouble frequently for acting out in class because the material didn't hold our attention. I spent almost every lunch period in middle school in detention because of this. (It kept me from having to deal with the lunch table issue though!)
  reply
• 

  Nicole Patterson

  1 year ago

  I love this artical I am on a papper for my school and I feel that it is important for kids to hear an artical like this one. It inspirded me to be nice to everyone because it does hurt them later in the future.
  reply
• 

  Darren

  1 year ago

  This actually made sense of what my school seems like. Thats... unusually helpful, actually. =\ although, it does seem to say that if any "nerds" start to become poular, then they are basically messing up their lives.
  reply
• 

  Jennifer

  1 year ago

  I'm so sure you're over analyzing this b/c the kids at my school are smart but maintain average popularities. It really doesn't have anything to do with what someone wants to achieve on: popularity vs booksmarts, but more on who you are as a person and the life that you're more pulled towards. People will hang around cooler [as in kinder, more interesting, more positive attitude] people. Even if you're focused on school, it doesn't mean many people don't have the idea of a cool nerd you are and want to be your friend. Also, I believe some nerds are like how you describe them as, but maybe they're avoiding popularity b/c they know they lack skills to get popular. You seem to assume popularity as a game anyone can win, but actually, not everybody. If you're nerd, you're a nerd. If you're popular, you have qualities making you popular. Being a nerd doesn't meant you also do have good social qualities to you keep to yourself for. The 8 hours you spend in school isn't 100% reading and writing. Nerds have time to be liked by peers. I also know for a fact that popular people might avoid the books b/c they think they aren't smart or patient enough. I do believe that the world would be better if nerds and popular guys get along.
  reply
• 

  Ryan

  1 year ago

  I was a nerd in high school but because I was on the wrestling team I was allowed to eat with the wrestlers and therefore some of my lunchmates were popular kids. This did not, however, make me de facto cool. I still got pushed around by some of the other, non-wrestling jocks and outside of the wrestling season I did not eat with those students anymore. After I returned from Germany and began my senior year, I had considerably more friends as people were curious about my trip but the curiosity soon wore off. I landed a major role in the school play and made many, many friends but since they were also in drama, I returned to the world of Nerds.
  
  Now I'm the mac and it has made the past all worth while.
  reply
• 

  vts_vts

  1 year ago

  Brilliant! Absolutely Brilliant!
  reply
• 

  Arjun Lall

  1 year ago

  Amazing. I just read this in the first chapter of your book and thought to myself "This is so good! I wish PG would post it online so everyone could read it." Little did I know that it already was. Very cool, now I can send it to everyone who I wanted to share it with.
  
  This should be required reading at all high schools. Cant wait to read the rest of the book in between my hacking binges.
  reply
• 

  maco

  1 year ago

  Wow, great analysis. The boredom, I think, could be remedied at least a bit if they stopped teaching the same thing every year and started challenging the kids. If they stopped telling curious youngsters to not worry about something because they won't learn it for years, that'd be wonderful. Being told, as a first-grader, that I wouldn't learn about negative numbers for a few more years was terrible. I already knew about negative numbers! It wasn't a matter of them having to teach me about them (as I said, I had already figured them out), simply acknowledging that I was right would've done just fine. Multiplication was the same way. Eventually you get tired of not being challenged and simply give up on paying attention, and then school becomes even worse. My computer architectures class as a sophomore in college taught binary. In college?! That was considered 6th grade math in the not-even-challenging school I attended throughout my childhood. The problem extends all the way through the secondary years, apparently (though, admittedly, the *rest* of computer architectures is very difficult). Things would've been a little better for all us nerds and geeks growing up if we'd at least been able to exercise our grey matter in school. Instead, that was relegated to books and flashlights in bed or hiding books to read under desk while ignoring the teacher.
  reply
• 

  Manny

  1 year ago

  WHy didn't you add the popular girlfrien part from the French version in this version
  reply
• 

  Rodrigo Gaytán Fregoso

  1 year ago

  I think this essay shows and criticize one part of american society, it is in fact remarkable how throughout decades the concept "Life in the school/Life at school" essentially captured in this essay, approach us to understand behavioural tendencies when whe where at school, and in some cases, how our kids are like, facing this daily-motion experience in hope to crash the "eternal" system. I really appreciate that the writer took time, and transformed it in space filled with consciousness, and seeks to fix this affair by motivating children to fix their problem. I think this awesome writer, can improve the essay by studying a little bit of latinamerican education and how those countries have somehow applied this psyche-deteriored ambient on their schools, take for example Mexico.
  reply
• 

  Trevor

  1 year ago

  Your analysis is very interesting, and major problems defiantly do exist in the education system, however in my high school I don't notice a correlation between smart kids and unpopular kids if anything the reverse is true however in my high school their is a lot of pressure to do well average gpa is about 3.45 and almost all students go on to college. I actually feel academically challenged for the first time in high school because i was given the option of taking honers and even college level courses, thus i feel the problem with our education system is the redundant and pointless curriculum that dominates primary schools.
  reply
• 

  - J

  1 year ago

  very true. I go to a British public (not the way you use it, that would be a 'state' school. A public is school is an exclusive branch of private schools like, say, Eton) school. I'm lucky in that there isn't such a popularity contest as there seems to be in the US, though it is still very present. Partly because of school uniform - and strict discipline (anyone caught using drugs will be immediately expelled. The discipline in state schools however is infinitely laxer.
  
  I would consider myself slightly 'arty,' and if I had to place myself in a social ranking I would be just above average. I'm odd though, in that I have close friends who are in the Rugby A team (a sure-fire ticket to social stardom) and nerds who spend lunch break looking up upcoming video games on the internet. This has its drawbacks, as in I am invited to parties where I feel very uncomfortable, or drawn into sports conversations I honestly couldn't care less about.
  
  Partly because I am what I like to call a 'secret geek.' I am ashamed to say that I pick on those who are truly unpopular like everyone else, when in my heart I do the same things they do. I just don't tell anyone. I often wish I had someone to debate Buffy the Vampire slayer with, or to write with on a pbp rpg. But I shroud these things in so much secrecy, because they're existance would send me spiralling to the bottom of the social ladder.
  
  Wow, this really mutated from 'i like this essay' to an introspective on my life. It feels good to type this, safe behind my iron curtain of secrecy. Anyway, I really like the article. It's very true.
  
  - J, of Guildford
  reply
• 

  Dead in life

  1 year ago

  The story is very true
  here is another nerd, who is just finishing school and doesnt know where to go, my aspiration is "the sky is the limit", no wonder why I dont like those people who say "you can become a doctor" for I dont want to become a doctor, there are doctors !!
  I may like to talk to anyone of you here ( because anyone has read this page and is reading the comments must be a little geek) so you can find me in Yahoo Answers "hidden" under the nickname of WISE_monkey .
  I would really like to chat with you, by the way I am a born christian-arab (dont activate your hearsay system) , but I dont care for all those racism, because i know that we all humans share one thing, for we are VERSION 2 OF MONKEYS.
  
  peace on all
  reply
• 

  cathy

  1 year ago

  I think this would be great to make into a book for middle schoolers. Add some awesome illustrations and they'd love it.
  reply
• 

  Emily

  1 year ago

  This is an awesome essay! It is so true. I am in ninth grade and am probably in group C, occasionally drifting to D. I have thought before about the fact that schools are pointless, but your essay really helped to explain it to my whole mind. I think all middle schoolers and high schoolers should read this.
  Fortunately, I am one of the few who have a bit of use in society. I got some prints of my artwork into a local art store recently and hope to add more soon! :) (my website shows them)
  reply
• 

  Answers found!

  1 year ago

  Wow sir I would like to thank you so much for this. I'm in 9th grade now and have ranked all the way from A to D in my 9 years of public/private school. I have a world history class following the that exact model of "7 major Egyptian developments are... and then on the test: What are the 7 major developments from Egyptians?"
  I was beginning to question the whole system when I found your site! Thank you so much for the advice!
  reply
• 

  tiffany

  1 year ago

  i think this is you ranting to make yourself feel better. and so all the nerds can join hands and say "wow , we are so cool, UNITE". i disagree with a good amount here. Popular kids get popular not because they strived so very hard to want it (everyone wants it, few are chosen) but because others gravitate towards them in the early years. Popularity starts as soon as youth is grouped together. as early as they can differentiate between someone attractive, and someone unattractive. i don’t know what schools you have been to now a days old timer, but these days nerds are a little different. we have two sets of nerds. the ones who are actually smart, and than the stupid ones who don’t do their homework, but just look like nerds. just because you're a nerd, doesn't mean your smart. And its the "cool" thing for popular kids to get good grades, or be "perfect". Sorry to tell ya this but times are changed. too bad you weren't born in this generation. Smart is the new pink.
  
  
  
  
  If you are anything like me you will try to analyze what I said to find out which category I am in. well I’m going to ruin you fun and tell you. I’m not in the popular crowd, but Im definitely not a nerd. Luckily I popped out a female and as we all know, the anatomy of a female (no matter what she looks like…ok maybe with a few exceptions) gets a heads up on the scale of any nerd. Aka, a nerdy boy usually looks worse than a nerdy girl. I’m getting off topic… my point being I am not a nerd. Neither did I get good grades. I’m terrible at spelling and grammar and its embarrassing how horrible I am. I guess you could say I’m … a little slow, at everything. I was a ugly little thing in middle school but by the time I reached high school popularity groups had already been established, restricting me to only jump up a few notches never allowing me to reach the most popular peak, (which I didn’t care much about as long as I wasn’t an outcast). I also didn’t care because what really mattered was what the boys thought of me, not the girls. A popular girl could trick herself into thinking I’m not competition because of my social status conducted from previous years before, but males at that age don’t thing with that part of their … brain? I guess you could say.
  
  I’m only telling you all of this because I have no mental challenge at the moment, ( I dropped out of high school because my eating disorder was taking over my life and I’m getting my GED, but I haven’t had a good assignment in much too long) and I was looking for some mental stimulation. So thanks for writing your thesis, so I could critique it.
  reply
• 

  Eva

  1 year ago

  In a fine example of proving the article right, here we have an undefined middle-ranker picking on an adult ex-nerd to make herself feel better for being a beached whale with an eating disorder, all under the guise of 'an assignment' without realizing that personal opinion have no place in true academic critique. Quite a self-centered conclusion to her little rant as well.
  reply
• 

  Harrison

  1 year ago

  excellent! Wish I'd have had this to show my parents 8 years ago - they'd have believed me! And as to that previous comment, the poster has no idea what she's talking about. I started at the *lowest* end of my popularity scale in elementary (being much too smart for all of pre-post-secondary school), and ended up in the second highest (because I started "Working" at popularity, as you say)... and I have exceptional friends at every interval both above and in between, and I'm going to save this essay on my computer as food for thought, and hopefully I'll still have it when I have my own kids, to remind myself. Fabulous insight.
  p.s. I'm still a nerd at heart. I'm in one of the best engineering programs in [my] country.
  reply
• 

  Teresa

  1 year ago

  Here in Australia we dont really have 'popularity' everyone is equal. Also, if you are gifted with intelligence, you will be looked up to
  reply
• 

  Greg

  1 year ago

  Good essay. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that school is a massive fake. It's funny I read this today because earlier today I was looking at all the "motivational" posters (The only thing they've motivated me to do is to be pissed) and was thinking about how much of my life was just a part of this sham. It's sickening. As far as my schooling ( Which is CONSTANTLY interfering with my education) is concerned, it's not gona change. Once I'm 18 and can vote (Dennis Kucinich '08) I plan to participate in every local election I can and am going to pay extra attention to what is happening with the schools.
  reply
• 

  Kidney

  1 year ago

  tiffany doesn't know what she's talking about, I'm a freshman in a small charter school too small for a real "society" so to speak but I went to a normal middle school before, in which case it was very active there are both kind of nerds yes, but the "stupid" ones are not usually nessesarially stupid, they are just not willing to waste their time doing the the same bullshit over and over again, and in fact realize the fact that school is just to keep us out of peoples way.
  
  Once you get into the 7th grade the system becomes so screwed up that you stop learning entirely. Like in math, you waste your time with review of everything you ever learned about math half of the semester, and when they finally start teaching something new the repeat it so much that you don't make any progress. My guess as to why this happens is that they are trying to include people who "learn by repetition" instead of working with each student individually.
  
  As well as that the nerds who get bad grades realize that the adults are trying to prevent this I've seen posters put up in classrooms that say things like "Question: When will I ever use this? Answer: You can never use what you've never learned." These are put up to counter the few sparks of brilliance the even the most dim witted people have, even if it doesn't answer the question. In fact it seems to me that it proves nothing. We know we cannot use it if we don't know how to, but if there is no where you are going to use it, than why bother learning it, but if you mention this obvious fact you're told you have an additude, or ironically that you are being smart.
  reply
• 

  Donda

  1 year ago

  I was a nerd in junior high, smart and going through some pretty difficult "growing pains." As a girl, I so desperately wanted to be "popular," especially with the boys, and I remember spending lots of energy striving to earn this popular status. While my hard work never produced a spot in the "A" group, I did lose a ton of weight and discover a dancing ability that placed me in the role of Pom Squad captain my junior and senior year. I dated a "B" member of the basketball team who was a couple years ahead of me in school and these things helped me maintain what I refer to as "B+" status. Like Tiffany posted, I do not believe it is completely being smart that defines these groups...many if not most of our "A" listers in highschool were the top of their class in terms of grades. In fact, this almost innate power to learn seemed to be the very thing that freed them to be able to focus their time and energy on developing and maintaining their popularity. I do believe that certain traits - physical beauty, self-confidence in front of large groups, athletic ability, money (to afford all the trappings of popular life) all seem to contribute to earning this elite status. However, maintaining one's title requires a lot of time, energy and attention. As I look back, I would have been willing to have devoted the time and energy to climbing the ranks - but there is a certain amount of "innate" qualities that one just cannot manufacture. Indeed, as one enters the adult world, the popular group becomes far more fractured. While there are people at the top of the pact, what places them there seems to change based upon the criteria of the particular setting be it the family, church, work, mom's play group, gym, etc. There is an unfortunate undercurrent of these tween and teen years that does, however, remain throughout our adult lives. As much as we may change, mature, and adapt on the outside - inside, many of us still fight the self-esteem and self-concept issues that were imbedded in us during our middle school and high school experiences. As a parent, it makes me more determined to not focus so much on protecting my children from the "world," but to protect them from this micro-system and to help them find an alternative way to pass from childhood to adulthood without being subjected to this degree of peer influence.
  reply
• 

  Alexis from Oakton High

  1 year ago

  what an incredible treatise on the decline of adolescent sanity! as I have suffered through innumerable accounts of teen-angst, this website is like a trove of intellectual pillars to support my weak and unformed ideas about what high school really means. I mean, in freshman year, I was so focused on academic and athletic prowess that I quickly withered because I was a nerd sans friends. So in sophomore year I got friends, conformed, and let my grades slide down into the ocean depths. And now that I'm a junior, slacking once more, I am questioning everything, even my friends, and the advice that we find something interesting is true, but basically, what i can really relate to is the responsibility kids need to be aware of. and your quote "Rebellion is as bad as obedience" will go down into the catacombs of my seven diaries. I want to thank you for your laudable efforts in creating this forum. it was of great assistance to me.
  reply
• 

  Cliff Schomburg

  1 year ago

  This is by far the most detailed, accurate description of what life is like in American public schools... or American government schools, as they are more accurately called. The government has provided us with a form a social welfare for our children, and their goal is not to train them to be thinkers, or even productive members of society, but simply to contain them until they are old enough to do something better. What is forgotten is that many of our great thinkers were published at a young age, some as young as 12 years old. Despite the natural challenges of being a teenager, there are many great things a mind can accomplish at a young age. Teenagers have become forsaken in our money-glorifying economic system, and they are left to fend for themselves. The author's insight and profound analysis are both accurate and important. This article has demystified much of my youth.
  reply
• 

  ninsane

  1 year ago

  WoW.Great article. I preferred reading this instead of the book I should have read for school... I was always curious about the american learning system. Guess it's the same old crap as here. I think we're given a lot more to learn, probably to keep us busy even after school ..
  reply
• 

  Farrukh

  1 year ago

  First, my appologies for skimming through the essay.
  
  Second: Whssaaaooo, a very interesting piece.
  Looking forward to your Hard Cover!
  reply
• 

  Anon6

  1 year ago

  There were some very interesting points, and also many points that don't seem correct.
  
  I would like to mention that as you have it stated, "Nerd" is not interchangeable with smart, and as a result you leave out the fact that there can be many intelligent people who still are completely social. This results in a massive hole in the thesis. Nerds, people who are smart and not socially adept, are unpopular. Wouldn't you also agree that people who are not socially adept are unpopular as well (That is to say the theoretical loner who has no friends. Even if people secretly think he's cool, as some girls think nerds are cool, he still has very little social contact, and is generally unpopular, because popularity must be recognized to be measured.) Thus what you really should be saying is socially inadept people are inadept socially! Popularity is a direct measure of your social ability around a group of people, and thus in a group of people (kids) who you are not adept socially, you are unpopular. It is very rarely, and you might say never, the case that a socially inadept person is popular among kids. In a group of outsiders who admire the "really outsider" kid, he is not socially in adept, but idolized and popular, and thus adept within that group.
  
  Thus we are left with the other side of the coin. What if what you really are trying to say is that intelligent people are intrinsically unpopular.This is closer to the truth within schools, but demands that unpopular be defined for all subsets of kids. By your definition "nerds" already don't have the social ability, but the lack of social ability sprouts from "intelligent people" ignoring it! I have known many intelligent people who have not become "socially inadept"(for we are talking only about social adeptness, as intelligence *itself* is not unpopular), and I have known plenty of people with below average intelligence who are socially inadept. At the same time, those on the fringes who are not popular among those circles can form their own "outsider" circles, but can be just as smart as those outside and just as popular as others within their own circles. Given a large enough population in any given circle, bullying between social circles would not exist.
  
  You speak from the experience that the outsiders (D table) only had one table out of everyone. What if the outsiders had just as many tables as the A tables? What if they had more? The common idea of the "common" high school student would be thrown out the window if they were less common, however in everyones minds they remain the same( the sports team/cheerleading partiers). However when there are more D than A, doesn't existing in group D give you much more popularity without as much social restrictions, especially if you already have been associating yourself with that group? If you have declared yourself a nerd, and now you enter an environment with more nerds than sports players, you are on top (college matches this perfectly). Intelligence itself doesn't cause unpopularity or social awkwardness now, because you are in a group of like-minded people who all value intelligence. Secondary schools could be exactly the same given the right mix of students, however there will necessarily be less like minded intelligent people because not all people go to college, and thus the ratios will be different. In today's high schools, intelligence has become a more popular thing to have that previously. It is not as important a factor yet as "fitting in", but given the right set of conditions, children will find the next big trend and just like your example of John Nash picking up new habits of the people he admired, they will latch onto the trend and run with it.
  
  To sum up: Intelligence is not a factor in popularity, but associations and populations of like-minded people is. If there is enough people with the same ideals as you, you will have both popularity and social acceptance, whether this group values intelligence or field goals, or whatever. The current status of the schools can change, but the change can be seen in the students without new school systems given time and the right societal changes to redefine what is popular.
  reply
• 

  studyingbehavior

  1 year ago

  About the suburbs....I saw the same things happen in New York City schools. Now living in the suburbs as a parent, I am not sure the difference is that significant.
  reply
• 

  Nat

  1 year ago

  Wow, this article is really great and interesting. I've just realized I'm a nerd, all you say here is so true. I'm glad I'm not alone. It seems like schools in France are becoming just the same as in America. Thank you for writing this !
  reply
• 

  cyber_rigger

  1 year ago

  In my school we had an elite nerd crowd. It was difficult to get in.
  
  "Popularity" has many faces.
  
  A blabbering extrovert does not equal popularity in some circles.
  reply
• 

  The Eternal Squire

  1 year ago

  Outstanding essay. Excellent premise for an EdD thesis. Should be required reading for every school principal and superintendant!
  reply
• 

  Soruthe

  1 year ago

  Certainly a great essay with a strong point of view. Though, more than that, this essay actually gave me more in the way of concrete evidence that the stereotypes for middle school are actually derived from something tangible.
  
  Though schools certainly vary.
  
  In my school, there is no one society of teenagers. There is the main collection of students, divided into blacks and whites and grays. There is the main group of athletic kids, and then the other groups. The smaller groups lead happier junior high careers, are smarter (though not necessarily academicaly), and quieter. They are also close-knit among each other, and there are certain social classes that neither harm nor benefit. They look at the main group, with its intricacies and its drama, and laugh. I am one of the outsider group.
  
  It's interesting to see how else a junior high system can be organized, but it seems that it all boils down to the same bubble and the same need for organization--however savage.
  
  Though, the intricacies of junior high life are more likely than not infinite. There is a certain rulebook built into people's minds absolutely FILLED with exceptions and clauses. Popularity is not a black and white thing, and the society in a school is not singular. A school is a large enough environment to achieve numerous societies with their own social castes. The way you have written about it simplifies it: "popular" is defined by being liked within the largest society in the school. In reality, it is different. There are cliques which range from large to small, either having or not having social classes. Smaller cliques form larger societies of closest-knit cliques, in which existing social castes blend and conflict with each other.... As I said, the rulebook has infinite clauses. I say this coming fresh from this system on a Friday night after school.
  
  So, you certainly might have included more about that in your essay. Though all in all, there's definitely a lot of good in it. Good job, and thank you for giving me something to think about.
  reply
• 

  Marie

  1 year ago

  I really appreciated this. I think I will make my mother read it, even though I highly doubt she will take it seriously as she seems to suffer from the illusion that she cannot possibly be wrong about me. It is good to know that some adults atleast appreciate that there are intelligent kids out there and that we aren't to be feared and put down.
  reply
• 

  blog nerd

  1 year ago

  This is an interesting article--I'm going to link to it.
  
  My high school experience was a little different and doesn't fit the mold. It was an all girls Catholic High School. It was entrance by exam, college prep, and very competitive. When girls don't have to worry about being unattractive to boys, its a funny thing. They get smarter. And lacking achieving male attention as a common pursuit, they compete at being smart against each other.
  
  While the smartest girls were NOT the most popular--which holds with your distracted theory, I found--they were not persecuted or unpopular by any stretch but greatly admired. By Junior and Senior year there was very little antagonism between the popular and unpopular girls.
  
  I was by all rights a nerd but I ventured into the freak category in as much as I flaunted not studying--but this was to differentiate myself from the Grinds. I was NATURALLY smart, you see. This was my way of setting myself a part--advertising emotional angst and complete intellectual boredom. This eventually succeeded in getting me begrudging admiration across cliques--or at least it seemed that way to me. And while it prevented me from developing a good work ethic, it set me apart.
  
  To show you how unusual the all girls competitive environment is: the most anticipated day of the year was rank day. Each quarter there was a clamoring as the class rank was posted. The top 5 (which occasionally but not usually included me) were quiet, sweet girls who worked hard (I was the exception, there--Lazy But Smart). They were universally well liked, for no other reason than they were NICE and eager to please but not sycophants. And the Top 10 was not without at least 3 or 4 of the most popular girls in school.
  
  The real social qualifier, in most cases ESSENTIAL for popularity: MONEY. And you could tell who had the money even in uniform: by the earrings they wore and their shoes alone.
  
  An unusual but interesting and, for a female, invaluable high school experience. If I could send my daughter to an all girls educational environment I would in a heartbeat. It never occurred to me in high school that being smart was a liability.
  
  That didn't happen until I discovered boys and the rest of the world in college. Talk about a rude awakening.
  reply
• 

  DO not wake the Dreamer

  1 year ago

  I think this is stupid. btw im working in my computer class right now. i was just board :D
  reply
• 

  Arthur

  1 year ago

  Just thought id leave a comment. i did really enjoy this article like alot of you other ones, and allot of you theorys such as the distraction theory and ect. is so true im a guy and just compitition even if theres no one else going for a girl guys still act like pricks like me sometimes just to prove ourselves and its funny cause we are like monkeys. ha..
  P.S.
  The guy below me (DO not wake the Dreamer) is very ignorant not because he said it is "stupid" but to have such a small statement not even to back it up (probobly Cause he didnt read it all) and negative comments for what? does it make him feel better cause he pts a "stupid" smile at the end of his sentence? I hate "Stupid" People
  reply
• 

  fraser

  1 year ago

  These are not new ideas, but one that many of us who home learn our kids have held dear. We have seen our children grow up without the negative socialization of schools and it is breathtaking. Not to mention it probably saved some of their lives.
  How can you put a value on that? It's hard to prove, but we see it all the time with our children so we have come to believe. John Holt would be happy to see this online.
  reply
• 

  jenai

  1 year ago

  wow nice essay. woww i finally understand the reason for nerds to be unpopular
  reply
• 

  kneller

  1 year ago

  Good essay.
  reply
• 

  K02

  1 year ago

  your essay was very excellent! i agree with almost words that it said.. it's very true..
  it's like i'm the one who's writing it... you can really see what's going on...
  SO GREAT!!
  reply
• 

  Ashley

  1 year ago

  Hi ppl i kindda enjoyed this essay .It was fun reading it and lol forgot tat this is the first essay I've read and i liked it
  reply
• 

  Nicole

  1 year ago

  I can't completely agree with all that you said, but then again I went to a smaller school of about 600-700 people. Most people in our school didn't judge people on their looks, mostly personality, which I find justifiable since it's what counts. I wouldn't say that I was popular, but I did hang out with the popular girls, I just didn't know very many people or go to many social activities, I consider myself a nerd. But the girls I was and am still friends with were never cruel to people unless they were cruel first. We also often invited people who would be considered nerds to sit with us at lunch if they were sitting alone. So I don't think your points count for all high schools, at least not in my small Canadian town. It was an interesting read though! thanks.
  reply
• 

  feedtherich

  1 year ago

  Being smart has nothing to do with being unpopular. You just fail at social intelligence, which actually makes you dumb, in a sense. I also fell into this category, and I still do. I am not in denial. All the 'cool' things I've done or people I've associated with do not take me out of the loser category. But I don't care, because humans are pathetic and we're all going to die.
  reply
• 

  Holly

  1 year ago

  I liked the point made about how some students choose academic sucess over popularity. The route taken at this stage is crucial and academic sucess is the wiser choice in my opinion. This article was interesting to read as I chose to study hard in sciences in school instead of working my way up the popularity ladder and this lead to all the pitfalls the author described so well. I'm glad I did as now I'm in my dream role as an undergraduate dental student and am planning to use my degree to travel and work abroad! Wouldn't you rather be known as an intelligent person?? Holly x (Manchester-U.K)
  reply
• 

  missprettybrownhair

  1 year ago

  First of all... who cares if your popular or not? im not popular in school, and the popular kids spread rumors about me like im gay so i told the prinicial and social worker ( hehe). anyway, popularity wont last forever! once u finish high school its the nerds that become popular and get good jobs while the other kids that are the son of a b*tch will get stupid jobs like garbage men or maybe even homeless! those are the kids who belong in h*ll ;)
  reply
• 

  Anonymous

  1 year ago

  This is a great piece! I have to say I moved from Barcelona to a city in the U.S. and was extremely surprised about all this 'popularity' concept. People were classified, tagged, and criticized behind their backs to make themselves feel better or feel identified. I consider myself to be a 'nerd' in the sense that I usually think ahead of other people and am used to 'philosophizing'. However, being from Barcelona, people categorize me as 'cool' just for being from a foreign city and my decision on ignoring popularity. I have many friends who would be on the 'D' grade in your map, and many others who would fall into the 'A' category. But I try to judge them for who they are, and not for how other people tag them. Anyways, I think this writing is very true and reflects the situation in many American schools. Good job!
  reply
• 

  Margaret

  1 year ago

  Stop complaining, Nerds aren't popular because they don't have the same interests. I'm a Cheerleader, i'm nice. And i goto a public school? So what? Reading this was seriously, no help at all. To tell you the truth.
  reply
• 

  Dude

  1 year ago

  IMO there are just basically different things.
  
  You just cant begin to explain em.
  
  You cant just classify reasons why people are unpopular. Their are many.
  
  The closest I could probably explain it imo is: Basically it just boils down to people being twats to a certaing degree, and people trying to not be seen as shit or whatever by the twats. And then them who are just noticed as people the twats dont like who find it hard to socially inteeract with others.
  
  But ye even that isnt right. Theres just too many reasons :P
  reply
• 

  bug

  1 year ago

  Hey Im 15! I have no idea why Im reading this stuff, but I think its pretty much true!I was popular until my parents put me in home school for no reason!! IT SUCKS!!
  But when I was in puplic school (last year) my class was mostly popular kids so every time a nerd, geek or ''retard'' came their parents would ''mysteriosly'' pull them out of school!! We didnt realy have seprate tables, but most people would move if someone they didnt like came!!!
  reply
• 

  Pete

  1 year ago

  Hey 15!!! I admire you for at least reading this article and developing your opinion based on an evolving and complete (as close as possible) set of facts, not emotions. That is why your reading "this stuff". Your parents are home schooling you because they love you and care for your well-being more than anything. Think about it for a few seconds. Apply logic to the situation. Leaving you in school would have been less work and much easier for them. However, From your point of view, which I'm sure is omniscient, there was no reason whatsoever for them to pull you out. In reality, you needed to be pulled out of your particular public school because the quality of your literacy is revealed in your brief comment. Your school was not providing you with an education, unless "Popularity" is the highest paying job these days. Also, more bad news for you, if "you were popular (as you say and are so convinced that you were) until your parents (who wake up every day and try to figure out how they are going to ruin your life) put you in home school; you were never popular. If being schooled at home makes you so repulsive to your friends, then you do not have true friends to begin with. I'm glad your reading, but you have a lot to learn young man. You don't know nearly as much as you think you know. Keep reading, get informed and honor your parents. There is a great deal of excellent research on the effects of public secondary education. I won't tell you what it says. Check it out yourself and you just might be surprised. Good luck.
  reply
• 

  bug

  1 year ago

  that is the real reason my parents put me in home shool, because they wanna suprvise me!!!
  Im bug scrole down!
  reply
• 

  gurl

  1 year ago

  u kno this story is soooo true! its like my life sudenly makes sense!! But missprettybrownhair ur u-tube vid dusnt make any sense!!!
  reply
• 

  Steve

  1 year ago

  Though long, this is a great article that makes a lot of solid points. I would probably put myself in the C or D category of people back in junior high and high school, but the whole popularity and hierarchy thing seemed to vanish once I entered college.
  
  It's just so funny to see how so much of your article applied to my life. Though I was a nerd during my adolescent years, I turned out graduating college with honors and getting a great job, and leaving the white trash bullies of past years in my dust.
  
  Funny how some of the people who disagree with this article happened to be the popular ones in school. They seem to feel threatened that the nerds 'play a game much closer to the one played in the real world.' Too bad for them. They're also not the ones that are at the bottom looking up in this hierarchy.
  reply
• 

  Anonymous

  1 year ago

  You guys are so right about this whole thing, except that I haven't seen a lot of bullying at our school, but I have seen people laugh at the "nerds" as you say, behind their backs.
  reply
• Comment removed.
• 

  cultofmetatron

  1 year ago

  a anubis
  reply
• 

  Eva

  1 year ago

  Knowing a detail of Egyptian myth doesn't mean you're smart, dear, just that you know a random factoid. There's a difference between intelligence - actual mental capability- and specialized knowledge. There's a reason IQ tests have to stick to general information, to avoid biases like that. The brightest kid in America would probably score like a retard if taking the test in Mandarin Chinese. It's not that she's dumb, just that this is outside her scope. Besides, it's Osiris.
  reply
• 

  blonddude

  1 year ago

  but u didnt say a thing bout being shy. I'm nerdy and shy! If i wouldn't be a nerd anymore, I'd still be shy, and what then? Ppl I'm not shy to like me, even popular kids, but the shyness made me a nerd, made me smart.
  
  If I wasn't shy, I wouldn't be this smart. But w/e, live and let live.
  (anubis? hard one!)
  reply
• 

  John

  1 year ago

  I'm a nerd!!
  Nerds are awesome!!
  reply
• 

  Matt

  1 year ago

  Okay as I read the quote
  
  "So if intelligence in itself is not a factor in popularity, why are smart kids so consistently unpopular? The answer, I think, is that they don't really want to be popular."
  
  I realized I was lucky enough to learn this in 7th grade. Really being avrage just means they don't put in effort. I learned that because you want to achive more all you have to do is show that you put in the effert. ( Please bear my spelling it's math and science for me).
  reply
• 

  John

  1 year ago

  Things DON'T change when you leave school.
  
  Being famous is an adult's version of being "popular at school" and look how they are treated by everyone else. No different than the relationships between nerds and popular kids - And most of them are simply famous because they're either good looking or good atheletes - just like school.
  
  As for why smart kids are nerds.
  
  The popular kids are:
  a) the best looking
  b) the best fighters and
  c) the best atheletes.
  
  Everyone else in their group are gimps, the reason why nerds stay away is because they're smart enough to realise this.
  reply
• Comment removed.
• 

  cultofmetatron

  1 year ago

  umm that only says if he read the same lil tidbit fact from some random factbook on ancient eqyptian history
  
  theres a diffrence between knowing its this_string.equal(other_string) because of what the book literally said vs knowing the appropriate use between that and this_string == that_string based on understanding of pointers (Mr. grahm, please forgive the use of java in this example, it was the first thing to pop in my head)
  
  IE: quoting random trivia is not and will never be an accurate measure of intelligence
  reply
• 

  <3 *=]

  1 year ago

  i dont think that being smart matters at my school actually
  some popular kids at my school are in honors math (the highest)
  and some nerds at my school arn't smart
  i think that personality is what determines your popularity
  anyway, thats just what i think =]
  reply
• 

  Eileen

  1 year ago

  I went to a prep school where good grades were generally admired. The popular people usually got good grades but were too well dressed and sociable to be nerds. There certainly were nerds, and although they weren't persecuted, they weren't popular, either. In several graduating classes the valedictorian (with the highest GPA) was a popular, preppy kid instead of a nerd. In my class I was the valedictorian, and I qualify as a nerd, at least superficially. I was unpopular because I was socially inept and poorly groomed. I studied, but didn't study much outside of schoolwork, and I still had time left over. I spent much of my free time sitting around doing nothing. The rest of the time I either played computer games that I sucked at no matter how much I played, or I browsed through fiction books. Only one person hung out with me after school, and my parents never let us go anywhere unsupervised. Part of the reason might have been that I came across as extremely clueless and apathetic and had a blank expression on my face all the time. (People sometimes ask me I understand English.) We wore uniforms, but while the other girls wore their skirts short and sometimes used makeup, I wore a skirt that reached down below my knees by a good 2 inches. I also wore glasses, and had crowded teeth (my parents didn't believe in orthodontics) and an unbelievably bad slouch that I didn't realize I had until after I graduated from high school. My fashion sense was determined by my parents, who bought everything for me. They wouldn't buy me jeans, anything low-cut, or short skirts. I also had no clue about makeup because they didn't like it. I grew up thinking that looking fashionable was something that would be utterly beyond me, but at the same time I thought it would be so cool to be a model. Now-a-days I'm usually too lazy and unpunctual to dress nicely (I'm always running late), but at 26 I'm finally starting to try things out and be social. Fortunately, I can still pass for 21.
  reply
• 

  Paddy3118

  1 year ago

  Good grief!
  Americans are just across an ocean from the UK. Are you truly that different? Can you not excel academically and in sports? Can the school student not be happy independent of their academic record?
  
  Tell me that you went to a bad, a-typical school. With your essay, and certain teen films we see over here, it paints a cruel and selfish portrait of American school life.
  
  - Paddy.
  reply
• 

  Bored Nerd

  1 year ago

  Ah, the brits learn our dirty secret.
  This essay makes a lot of sense to me. One thing you said was very interesting to me:
  
  "There was something else I wanted more: to be smart. Not simply to do well in school, though that counted for something, but to design beautiful rockets, or to write well, or to understand how to program computers. In general, to make great things."
  
  I couldn't agree more. This explains a lot. for example, I'm a grade-A nerd (quite literally) but I don't try hard on boring assignments. I can admit I' m a slacker, for several reasons. First, I don't _need_ to try hard. I get good grades anyway. but also, I'd rather work out a tricky computer program or make yet another useless geometric picture-cipher than spend extra time reviewing for a test I know I'll do well on. nerds don't have time to be popular because they're thinking about things on a more abstract level (or maybe that's just me).
  I'm a nerd, but I don't care much about grades. It makes sense, really. in the article you talked about the meaninglessness of grades and tests. I'm smart enough to realize playing the game of perfect grades is a useless as popularity (well, almost). I just have more intellectually stimulating things to do than worry about my clothes. or obsess over essays.
  after this rant, though, I need to add that I do try hard on interesting assignments. I'm a perfectionist if I want to write a good essay for its own sake, if not for the grades. And a good report card is the ticket I need to slack off. Pass a certain point, and you can spend class time doodling on graph paper.
  reply
• 

  Anonymous

  1 year ago

  Im a Kid In And Enlgish School And Its All True
  
  If Your Not Confident Enough
  Pretty Enough
  Fake Enough
  
  Then Your Not Accepted
  
  And If You Try Hard To Get Notcied You Get Called a Suck Up
  
  Theres No Way Of Winning Its Quite Depressing ...Thats Why I Can't Wait to Leave School Not Because Of The Work Because Of The People
  reply
• 

  nerd killer

  1 year ago

  i beat up nerds like you !
  i grew up killing your friends and my parents were the same !
  us cool people hate you you scum bag !
  eat dirt!
  i rape you in the showers while you scream my name
  'again captain scott'
  i love ur buttocks
  grrrrrrr u nerd
  reply
• 

  Street saavy

  1 year ago

  You'd have gotten a eyeful of mace.
  reply
• 

  Non Rapped Nerd.

  1 year ago

  Oh wait, I do believe you just proved his point. Thank you for your perfect example. ;D (ironically, unless the nerd in question is being tortured by PE I see no reason for them to be even near your stink locker rooms)
  reply
• 

  Shovinus

  1 year ago

  Haha another idiot, I love what you wrote nerd killer, brilliant out burst, I think only my dog could have written something better. You stupid piece of insignificant shit.
  If you are cool then I hope I am not, I would hate to be the link to our Neanderthal past that you are demonstrating so clearly. You are the reason this world is in caos, you are the reason there are so many wars, you very exsistence is proof of devolution and lastly you are so stupid you probably have no idea what I just wrote. :) Have fun.
  reply
• 

  Scarred

  1 year ago

  So true. One thing you didn't touch on much though is that a lot of us never recover from the psychological damage done during this time. I never did.
  reply
• 

  who cares

  1 year ago

  LOL, im 36 now, from the UK. I'm reading posts from other people in the UK saying how different life must be in the US, but I have to disagree. I can draw parallels with what you have written with how things were for me, being a nerd at the bottom. Maybe the other posters with their perfect views of english school life were just like the adults unaware of what life was like at the bottom. And as for the 'Schools in England involve 85% of school children being socially capable of holding a conversation on their own...' bullshit
  reply
• 

  Fatima

  1 year ago

  I graduated in 1999 with 200 other students in the mid-west, and let me tell you this is exactly how our school was. Our school was small enough that the nerds and the freaks fit at one table, and we shared enough traits it was hardly worth differentiating. I despised the entire system so much that the idea of college turned my stomach because I believed it would be an extension of high school except I had to pay for it. Now I have a career with a fortune 500 company, a husband, and two kids. Looking back I see the same traits you reveal. I remember telling myself at the time that the things I occupied myself with were more relavent, but that doesn't stop the sting of teenagers' cruelty as it's happening to you. You just endure through it and hope you discover you're right when you hit the real world. Fortunately I was. I did, however, have to put real effort into correcting my social awkwardness that had, indeed, become a strange form on defence in school.
  reply
• 

  Me

  1 year ago

  I'm from the UK, and I'm in 6th form and what you said appiles to my school and I think every school. This year in 6th form I've noticed a change in the social structure, all of the smart kids seem to be grouping together and the 'popular' crowd seem to have their own group that isn't really considered 'popular' anymore.
  In about year 8 I was friends with some of the 'popular' crowd but I didnt like them very much because they were always bitching about each other so much. That's why i tend to habg around with the 'freaks/nerds' I find them more friendly. True I dont hang around with the very odd people, but I wish I had time to talk to them more, because I am sure they are actually very nice people.
  reply
• 

  super-nerd

  1 year ago

  the life of a nerd is so difficult. It would have been easier if at that time we were able to understand the reason why we were different. Another reason a nerd mey not have been able to fit in was because he\she could not make sense of this fictitious social hierarchy...due to the fact that nerds were superior. Nerds generally are more aware and more true to themselves...we can see if a society is based on false values. What they prize we despise.
  reply
• 

  Ben Buurman

  1 year ago

  Thank you man.
  
  I am a High School Nerd just like the ones you talked about here, and what you have said is extremely relevant, and is also an inspiration for when I get the middle finger in class for knowing what pi is.
  
  Just 3 more years ;)
  reply
• 

  the simpsons!!!!

  1 year ago

  hi. i'm in 5th grade and live in australia. i don't think i'm a nerd even though i'm smart(and i mean REALLY smart) everyone kind of ignores me. i've only got 2 friends and everyone else has like 50 friends. thanks for your message, it has really got me thinking about stuff!!! =)
  reply
• 

  F

  1 year ago

  Hey man... I would probably be one of those "freaks" you discribed, and I would like to thank you for bringing some of this out into the open. I've been saying this shit since middle school, and I finally found someone else with the same ideas.
  
  Great essay dude... Drop me a line sometime: ferret949@yahoo.com
  reply
• 

  Tim

  1 year ago

  Hey, I'd just like to say thanks and that your essay is brilliant, I'm out of high school now, two years, but I still remember what it was like and while I wasn't usually actively picked on (I wasn't a small kid so I guess potential bullies thought twice often as not passed about grade 9), I was still ostrasized and it's still effecting me now, I spend alot of time in recluse just thinking about myself in the scheme of things and.. regretably often of my place in the social heirarchy that exists among people my age. Your essay has really helped put some perspective on things, at least another perspective to my own that I can consider,
  
  Thankyou
  reply
• 

  Admin Dude

  1 year ago

  great essay man, I'll come for more : )
  reply
• 

  matt

  1 year ago

  If I were to be caught reading this now (at school) it wouldn't be good.
  reply
• 

  Rachael

  1 year ago

  I am a senior in high school. Often I feel myself losing faith in the world and in people. But like you said, that is because my world is high school. It's fake, cruel, and often just full of superficial alliances, drinking, sex, parties... Often I feel off center, like the world doesn't fit with me...I am fortunate enough to have formed acquaintances and a solid group of dependable people...(no one really bullies me now that I have "grown") Yet, I remember the worst years of my life, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. I was lost and alone. I can relate to what you wrote here completely.
  reply
• 

  aseashell

  1 year ago

  im not smart but i am considered the highest popular group
  reply
• 

  Timbo

  1 year ago

  Great essay dude you really hit the nail on the head. I wouldn't call myself a nerd because I've occassionaly hung out with the "popular" kids but there have been plenty of times when I feel like I'm on another planet from everyone else. I'm a freshman in college and all I can say is life gets better every year. I think the quote that's sutiable for this essay is "life my not be the party you hoped for but while there you should at least dance".
  
  RHCP rules!
  reply
• 

  Vorlondel

  1 year ago

  Your essay is truly a God send, while I suffer no real pain from individuals now, for I’m a Jr. in High School. Also, as you stated, my father just so happens to be a geek (he was in on the first green screens), who was left to his own in school. However he was an introvert so his proportional solitude was bearable, and desired. Also i am apart of a wonderful program called Academic Decathlon, which is a place where nerds (or non unsmart people) can live in comfort. i my self was so received to find that in this heaven (a certain teacher's class room) are people SMARTER than me.... I was stunned and joyed. so the nerd herd lives together, in harmony and we naturally scare off all jocks and the like.
  
  I, for the record, would like to reaffirm one point: I don't have perfect grades... nor to I really even care about the grade beyond getting accepted in to collage. My passion is Math and my hobby is writing randomly. I neither need nor care about the grade because my life doesn’t revolve around them. Grades are only as good as the person behind them.
  
  -Vorlondel-
  reply
• 

  northfacekid

  1 year ago

  I am a nerd and proud. Nerds are accepted more in my school because we help the popular idiots with homework
  reply
• 

  Shovinus

  1 year ago

  Hmm nice collection of thoughts, I have not read it all because man it is long but here are some of my observations in an english not american school, we to have a hierarchy but ours is less brutal than yours, children here are often protected from bullying more. These observation are not global, some do not obey these as laws.
  1st observation - To become popular often you first need to believe yourself to be above others, if you do not believe this yourself then how will others? An automatic response to this is to believe you have the right to pick on those you feel are below you. Once you do this you notice it gains you popularity and often will continue to, until your popularity is based on your ability to belittle others. However a smart person learns quicker, everyone gets trod on by someone, and a smart person very quickly learns empathy, the ability to place themselves in someone else shoes. I know myself I could never belittle anyone else for a simple reason - it could be me, and so my popularity never grew via this method.
  2nd Observation - It is human genetics and most animal genetics that automatically make the strongest and most confident man or even woman the alpha man/woman and not brains, and it is true alot of people have one or the other and not both. Why? why dont clever people wish to make themselves footballers, and compete? Well often they dont see the point, it is hard physical work, why would you need that if you have brains. Actually you are looking the wrong way, often people become clever because instead of going to kick a ball around, they stayed in reading, or even watching tv (yes tv can teach you somethings) again drawing from my experience, I liked to play football, but I liked to read just as much, there is another reason I prefered to stay in (see obs. 3).
  Observation 3 - Smart people often lack good social skills as children, they see things differently and do not like to talk about meaningless things such as going to school, they wish to talk about possiblities and things that often the less smart have no idea about, and this will always be one of the biggest dampers to conversation, People hate what they dont understand and so the less smart will try and shut up the smart, again this is automatically seen by others as a show of power, and so one loses rep for not standing up while the other gains for pushing down. They also lack the social skills for other reasons in ome cases, for exam they consider other people more (see obs1) and so do not wish to push in and so the conversation will go on without them saying anything (not good), when they do say something it will be misinterpereted because they know what they mean,but telling it to someone of less intelligence is not so easy (like trying to open an excel 2007 with excel 95)
  4th observation - I actually have met some very intelligent popular people, who for the very simple reason that smart is seen as bad do not wish to be seen as smart incase they are disrespected.
  Alot of these reasons work back and forth between each other, however it is good to know that those that have problems normally get passed them as the get older, though to say that the hierachy is not there in adults would be wrong, atleast the way people see each other can stay the same for life, I know grandparents that still despise the smart/popular/sexy/ugly for no reason other than it is what they learned to do in school.
  These are my thoughts, maybe I am wrong, and I agree with most of what I read of yours.
  reply
• 

  Shovinus

  1 year ago

  Oh to update my observations, to all you clever people out there, I was once belittled and among the unpopular in middle school, but in high school I learned something, number 1 rule to get along in life well - DONT CARE - go and talk to those people you think are more popular, have a laugh with them, show that you are not uncomfortable talking with them, sure at first they may still kick you but after a while they will get used to you, never push it, learn when to be quiet and when to talk. Do not hate them because they are different everyone is different, how are you any better than they just because you have brains? or to you popular guys how are you better just because you look good? By the time I left high school there was hardly anyone that I was not friends with because I learned to accept them for who they were, all of them, and they in return respected me. This maybe harder for you to comprehend in america, where judging from tv you have a really *ucked up social system, but I bet the principles still work, use your brains, watch other people, learn from them. I am trying to help you because I know my time at the bottom was not nice, while my time at the top was brilliant.
  I know there are some meat heads out there who will reply to this saying something highly intelligent such as "That was the biggest load of turd ever." to those that do - if you aint got something nice to say - "SHUT THE HELL UP"
  PS it helps if you do gain some muscle to defend yourself ;)
  reply
• 

  Shovinus

  1 year ago

  You seem to think that popular is based on the footballer, cheerleader, ideal of a person, this is wrong, you have to understand, to be popular, by definition you just need to have alot of people like you, you dont need to be in the coolest group. For example if everyone in a school was friends with everyone else in the school who would be popular? answer everyone.
  What you guys want is people to like you yes? So be yourself. For the benefit of the younger me, that kid who is getting bullied for being different, be yourself, do not allow other people to push you around.
  Talk with people dont block them out, do not be shy, if you are shy people will see it as weakness and will prey on it and you will just become more shy.
  I may sound like a blathering idiot, and sometimes it is hard to communicate exactly what I mean. However I have been from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high. I am not stupid, I have an IQ last tested of 150, but none of it matters if you do not have friends, they are what support you, they are what make your life bearable, you can strive to be like those footballers and cheerleaders if you want, but you have to ask yourself, what do you really want, to be a stuck up arrogant morron or to have friends, because at the end of the day I will always go for having mates. "divided we fall, but together we stand tall". I will tell you a story about the difference having friends can make instead being the guy that makes everyone else life a misery.
  
  "I was once in a club with my brother, fairly drunk, my brother is 2 years younger than me and a "popular" kid, I love him though, and will protect him no matter what. We were just standing talking to other people when another kid came over and started to punch my brother, again and again, with another big guy stopping people from getting near, at first I was shocked because I had no idea what was going on, I thought maybe he had done something, so I started to walk over and said to the guy "hey what are you doing, what has dan done" at this point no-one else was coming at all to protect dan (my brother) and the big guy just says "stay out of it", so I said "no he is my brother, tell me what he has done" at this point the big guy swings for me and I catch his hand, the guy that was hitting my brother stopped and swung for me 2 but I catch his hand aswell and hold on so they cant swing at me, at this point about 30 of my friends, swarm around us and push us apart, my brother walks outside and heads for home, while I am standing in the middle of a crowd of people all stopping these guys from getting anywhere near me, it is then that I realised who my friends were and that I would not give them up just to seem like the popular person. Those were all people who I had just accepted and talked to as people. It is even funnier that I later became mates of sorts with the big guy because he respected not only the fact that I was the only to stand up to him but that everyone else rushed to protect me but not my brother. "
  
  There are many bullies who you may think you are above or better than, there are many snobs that you may think you are better than, footballers, cheerleaders, even bums, and tramps or your average joe. Let me put you straight, and if you are clever and of open mind you will understand this - "You are wrong". You are not better or worse than anyone around you, you are different everyone has been shaped by different lives, by different genes, but at the end of the day if you do not understand that, you are just as ignorant as a racist, nazi, or whatever, that may be hard to take, and I am not saying you should let people get away with what they want, you shouldn't I am saying that you should manage to understand that - in their shoes you WOULD do the same.
  So next time you talk to a "cheerleader" or "footballer", talk to them not as a superior or inferior person, but as an equal.
  Most important of all even more than being clever are friends and enjoying yourself, life, is for the living, live it, dont hide away and watch it go by. If you are lonely you can come on here and talk, I will talk back if I am around, but dont get sucked in to this, get out, make friends.
  Please listen to me, I have seen too much misery in this world caused by one man wishing to be better than another, as soon as the world understands we can live as equals it will be a much better place to live.
  reply
• 

  someone who is anonymous

  1 year ago

  do you know that some people just dont want to be popular or just like to be alone sometimes? being popular doesnt mean you're loved, it means people who dont even know you like you because you're pretty or you do something for them. being loved is for who you are, that's not the same thing. being popular sucks, they're the most miserable people of them all.
  reply
• 

  Shovinus

  1 year ago

  I am not miserable, I am one of happiest people around, I wanted to be alone aswell, I spent my time hiding in the library in middle school. I wanted to be alone, but not because I didn't want friends, because I wanted people to stop picking on me for being different. Having too many friends can be worse than having none at all, if you have too many they are likely to not be true good friends, and you may turn around one day to find they have all moved on or something, but that doesnt mean you should not be nice to everyone.
  I am not trying to preach here, if you are happy where you are at, I say to you stay there, but if you are one of those people who like me used to sit in the corner alone and sad, try and change it, dont keep sitting there, the problem propbably wont go away.
  I have a good friend who is stuck in a rut that she has worked herself so deeply she does not want to do what is needed to get out, she has left it too long and ahs got used to being sad and alone, I watch her and I try and pull her out but at the end of the day she has to be the one to change her situation, I can provide a ladder but only she can climb it.
  My message to anyone stuck in a situation alone is that you dont have to stay there, climb out, find your strength of will, the longer you leave it the worse it gets.
  
  I dont know what more to say, there are people out there who want to get you, who are so selfish and narrow minded they cannot see beyond their own eyes, but be happy in knowing that you are not them. They will have problems all the rest of their lifes most likely, whereas you can step out and change your future. Also be happy to know that if you look properly there are probably alot more people willing to help you than you first believe. I am one but in every society there will be others there to help.
  reply
• 

  L

  1 year ago

  I think acceptance is part of this issue, not just a lack of trying on the nerds part. Although there are of course those of us that just wish to not be a part of a large group. I was a nerd who liked to be alone much of the time, not to say that I didn't band together with a few other nerds who often had the same thoughts I did. Once you are at the nerd level of society in school there is very little, if anything you can do to change your status. Even being exactly like the 'popular' kids won't save you. I used to get irritated with kids who thought that changing would save you. I have no intention of allowing my children to go through the same things I did in Jr high and high school. I don't know as I will attempt to change the current system so much as change how I work within it. I will probably have my children home schooled and if they are interested in my business they can learn over my shoulder or I will find someone they can learn with in a business they enjoy. I am aware they will still have to go to college to get the piece of paper that says you can have this job but that part will be a formality and hopefully easier because of the knowledge they will already have.
  reply
• 

  Alastriona

  1 year ago

  That was a fascinating essay. Very nice job writing it.
  
  As a freshman in high school (and one of the smart girls who was saved from nerd-hood by good looks), I must say I agree. I went to an amazing elementary/middle school combo school, but once I got into high school... challenges disappeared. I've told a senior friend who agreed with me that the only reason I still go is so that I can get out of it, aka get into a great university so that I WILL be challenged.
  reply
• 

  Klasanov

  1 year ago

  As a senior in HS and a fellow nerd, I agree with this. Good essay.
  
  As a guy who can't throw a football worth a damn and of average fitness level, I'm not high on the "popularity hierarchy", but I'ce also learned to not really give a damn, either in my senior year. Realizing this fact has made life a little easier.
  
  Of course I'm also a bit older (20 as opposed to 17/18) due to not doing so well at school before (homeschool is much worse, let me tell you), and as a nerd, I'm not by far of the most unpopuar kids in school, mainly due to having built something up in creative writing class with my input (I've been doing it for quite awhile) and quirky humor. Of course it isn't the nerdiness that is getting me anywhere, but that I've learned some semblance of social skills in my time.
  
  I think the biggest poblem for me growing up was never fitting to any of the "social norms" you find anywhere. I can get along with most groups now without really having to conform... Um, hard to explain what I mean, just that as time went on I've been with this or that group but always as an outsider. or something.
  
  Damn.
  
  I mean, good essay. Really hits home and gives me more hope for the future.
  reply
• 

  Peck

  1 year ago

  I completely agree.
  I'm a nerd too, and every day I get commented on who I am and the way I am.
  But this essay made me realize some important things and completely changed
  my view on society.
  I thank you.
  reply
• 

  14 year old Australian.

  1 year ago

  I am in High School at the moment, and agree completely with the essay. The Australian School System seems to be much the same as the American. I have changed much of my life to become 'popular', but i really don't think it is worth it. I started Grade 8 as a nerd and then became someone i am not sure if i like, for popularities sake.
  reply
• 

  Anonymous person

  1 year ago

  I agree with everything on this essay, it is 100% true.
  reply
• 

  Dan

  1 year ago

  Thanks for writing this essay, I've read it a few times. It gives me hope to carry on in school.
  reply
• 

  Alec

  1 year ago

  I just wanted to thank you for your essay. You have articulated some of my feelings in a compelling, eye-opening way.
  reply
• 

  Jess

  1 year ago

  I'm startin High School in 2008, and i'm smart but it only shows in tests but not normally. Everybody is buds with me.
  reply
• 

  Dan

  1 year ago

  Good luc with dat
  reply
• 

  Exhaust Fumes

  1 year ago

  As a mature adult that is experienced with social dynamics,
  
  Before you can succeed in the external world, it's best to master your internal world. Zen meditation helps speed that process up by clearing up mind blocks.
  
  It helps ease mind waves in a sense that it ask you to accept things are they are as they appear in the moment.
  
  I recommend the Book "Zen Mind: Begginers Mind" to get started if you are interested.
  reply
• 

  1337

  1 year ago

  American Rugby players haha. I am a nerd but I am also a rugby player in Australia, I am going to a selective school I wonder how they will define nerd there.
  reply
• 

  grasshopper

  1 year ago

  Thankyou very much. You are lucky to have the support of good friends, like your group who did the popularity tables evaluation at school. I think you have a gift for writing, offering a simplicity and humour to deep seated primodial motivations, that usually bind denial even in nerds. The rogue male of the pack, often leaves to live alone as he doesnt want to compete or jostle within the group paradigm. Often he dies alone, away from the warmth of a mate and security of the group and family. Many famous and important scientists were persecuted and celibate..Adulthood does not always change things for nerds... many do not actively contribute to society because of the damage they suffered from ongoing persecution since young, often never developing social skills and becoming compulsive addicts and other mental diversions. Bullycide is not limited to schools. Oppressors too suffer. Bullies are not usually happy. The removal of ignorance is a path to enlightenment, for the detached buddhist. In the christian model of relationism to society, love and forgiveness conquer the bully whos gibes fall flat if they have no effect.....
  reply
• 

  grasshopper

  1 year ago

  Err, just explored you site. I thought your writing was too good for a school kid... my apologies. I just had an idea. Nerds couldnt really protect wife and children or the homeland from invaders as well as jocks? Imagine a country where nerds were given a place of power and art, science and engineering leapt ahead, peaceful, loving and understanding relationships prevailed.... the barbarian hordes would invade and plunder all that was good. No? Maybe the olde religions are correct in the teaching of light and dark, balance, yin ang yang....unless a new renaissance is possible? Will the lion really lie down with the lamb?
  reply
• 

  Hmph

  1 year ago

  Grrr... that would be a much better world to live in. Highschool is even worse... from what I've seen so far, no one is downright MEAN, but everyone just sort of ignores the smart people. But they have their friends, right? I'm a bit of a nerd myself and I have a few great friends. i have just as much fun as the partying idiots who think they're so cool now but are going to end up being lunchladies and minimum-wage workers.
  reply
• 

  stranger

  1 year ago

  i think that it's hard being in an amarican school .... i wanted to be an exchange student and study in amarica .... but i have second thoughts about it.... couze of that popularity thing ..... =)
  but from what i hear i thing that what is written is 100% true
  reply
• 

  grasshopper

  1 year ago

  Maybe nerds are idealists and not realists? Nerds have character defects and shortcomings like everyone else, they are not saints. "Unable to meet life on lifes terms" is a 12 step program of addiction saying. Is the accumulation of knowledge an addiction. Defined, addiction is a compulsive obsessive repitition of behavior that causes suffering to oneself and loved ones. Freud said neurosis is part and parcel of industrialized existance. In villages, nerds were medicine men and lived apart and were respected. Free nerds from the pain of public schooling!! Free all from public schooling!! Move to scandanavia and attend better public schooling!! Viva la revolution!! Smoke pot and escape!! Hang out with Kevinjonas he is god!!
  reply
• 

  majorghn

  1 year ago

  When I was in high school in the early to mid 70's in Pittsburgh PA, their was another group not mentioned here "The Greasers" which started in the late 50's to about 1979 when it got a "new" label by the well-to-do class of kids "White Trash" & later on "Trailor Trash". The "Real" Greaser class of kids were low income whites who smoked cigarettes, shop lifted constantly, had a juvenile record in many cases, cut classes, spen many hours in home detention, got suspended from school frequently, usually for fighting or got caught smoking in the bathroom. They wore their hair above the collar and slicked it back with oil based hair tonics, wore black stove pipe pants with low cut black Converse tennis shoes, and the main symbol of the "Greaser" was the "Black Leather Jacket" which in those days cost around $70.00 a tidy sum in the 70's. These inner city greasers could fight very well and often carried switch blades. I lived in the suburbs that bordered the city line and our high school football team played against many of the inner city teams....fights after the game were common. I, as a lower middle class kid, along with my older (1.5 years older) sister, indentified with the true greasers, as we had many things in common. Us neo-greaser class did not get messed with very often by the jerk football jocks because we traveled in packs and had a pretty good network of fellow greasers who would back us up if we got into a fight in school or if we did lose a fight we would call upon our fellow greasers and plan our revenge and "jump" the offender off school grounds, usually at a nearbye store where kids hung out after school or at a dance or game and pounce on the offending jock and beat the snot-out-of-them. We wore the same greaser attire as the inner city kids and pretty much did the same things as them except for getting arrested for serious crimes other than under age drinking, fighting, and shoplifting...sometimes a few would get arrested for stealing a car on a dare or for tshort term transportation. My dad and my uncle were cops so I had to be especially fast at running when the cops were spotted when we were doing stupid stuff as mentioned. I never got caught but my sister got caught sniffing glue by my uncle, she evetually ran away from home at age 16 and never looked back. I quit school mid-way through tenth grade....had 190 days absent from school anyway, so why not. I left home at 17 and bumbed around a bit and evetually went into the Army at 18 and got my GED while in the Army. I came back to Pittsburgh for about 9 months and didn't like civilian life and went into the Navy as a medic and later on while in the Navy started college classes and several years later got my B.S. degree. I am now a successful business owner. As far as nerds in my school, went we referred to them as the "smart kids" or "brains" and did not bother them, we actually got help from them occassionally (tutoring) for upcoming test, of course we gave them an offer they couldn't refuse...we even sometimes rescued them (if they were the ones who had helped us on a test) from being hasseled by the schools jocks...the school's jocks were out #1 enemy and we did not need much of an exuse to trounce them. Their were no computers or electronic gadgets like they have now, so the word geek was not formulated until the early 90's when home & business computers started to become more common place....this all led to the birth of the "Geek" or "Nerd" in the American high school vonacular....but as more kids got PC's these "geeks" became someone you needed to know and be friends with, even if it was on the "sly"....I heard a common practice among the popular kids in schools who had geeks help them with their home PC's and got "outed" was to say "oh, I paid some geek to fix my computer"..which in reality was bunk, their was usually no money exchanged at all, the geek did it to gain favors, like not getting hassled in school or if it was a popular girl, would do it for for the "ogle factor" or just to be liked for awhile by this great looking girl.
  
  If your a true "smart" nerd reading these comments, remember one thing above all else.....what you do or not do in high school will matter when you graduate from high school...whether or not you go to college or not. Think of high school as a big fish tank with lots of other fishes......all of the fishes in the tank will eventually be released into the ocean, how popular, good looking, or athletic some fish may be in your tank will mean nothing once they are released in to the ocean......these good looking, popular, and athletic fishes will have an overwhelming amount of competition once released into the ocean with billions of other fish...their once "top-of-the pecking order status while in the tank may just now leave them feeling like a "Guppy"......it will be the smart fish that were in the tank who have the best chance of surviving in the ocean...brains matter folks. Stick to your chess clubs, your computer clubs, business classes, and stalk your school and local libraries.....it is the "Mr. & Ms. Bill Gate's'" of the world who will ultimately excel and be successful.....smart successful people in the "real world" are admired, needed, and in the end.....DO Get The Girl (or guy as-you-may).
  reply
• 

  depressed chick

  1 year ago

  I googled why and got this long essay... its just life for every1 2 treat u like shit no matter who u r!!!
  reply
• 

  Mike

  1 year ago

  Brilliant, I'm currently in High School and although nerd and smart are no longer interchangeable, much of what you said rings true.
  reply
• 

  Irish Aspie

  1 year ago

  Well written. It's not so aggressively bad as that here in Ireland. The divisions exist between groups but it's not so harsh. I was part of a kind of outsider group, some nerds mixed with pot users. Intelligence was not so frowned on by peers, moreso social ineptitude. By fifth (15-17) and sixth (leaving cert) year most students had developed an understanding that people deserve equal treatment. I don't know if this is because of transition year or not, it's an optional extra year in secondary education where there is some community work and work experience (a taste of the real world).
  
  I do know that I visited my Aunt in America when I was about twelve I think I met a grouping of 'popular kids', a group of older siblings of my cousins friends. It didn't go well, I said hi and they looked at me as if I was a repulsive insect before returning to their previous conversation. I didn't understand at the time why. I know now, that, while I regarded them ar rather rude, they viewed themselves as superior to me and thus beyond their notice.
  
  I would agree with the point of bordom causing the various class divides and I feel that I was lucky with the ammount of great teachers I had. The only class that I was kinda bored with was history/geography and that was because I kept wanting to correct the teacher (due to the fact that I was really interested in both subjects and was reading beyond the levels he studied). After a while I just started bringing novels in, it was a laugh, he didn't notice until another student pointed it out.
  reply
• 

  FlirtyChick

  1 year ago

  this bitch at school tried to be better than me and get me to be jelous and it worked so im going to plan b
  reply
• 

  Fernando

  1 year ago

  Great essay!
  
  I think that what you describe applies to nerds/geeks everywhere. At least, it applies to what I lived through at a good public high school in Spain, the country where I grew up, during the eighties.
  
  I don't think the problem in the US is necessarily worse than in other countries. The advantage American nerds have over nerds elsewhere is that they can come to Silicon Valley or other geek clusters and live happy lives right after high school graduation or right after college (if they didn't get into one of the Bay Area's schools and wanted to get a bachelors degree before going to work). .
  
  For me to come to the Bay Area, I had to work very hard through college to be among the top graduates of my class, so I could be hired by an American company based in Spain so I could be transferred to the Bay Area. By the time I came here, I was already 26 and I found myself as an immigrant here. Even though this is as close to a meritocracy as it can be humanly possible made, you American geeks enjoy the advantage of having been born and raised in the country which is home to geek wonderland (therefore don't have to deal with language/cultural barriers)! So please, be thankful to that!!!!!
  reply
• 

  J Broshek Enyeart

  1 year ago

  There are things (like the stuff talking about Italy) in the Japanese translation that aren't included in the original (or I'm assuming the English version is the original). Why is that?
  reply
• Comment removed.
• 

  Irish Aspie

  1 year ago

  (addressed to hi)
  You're a kid, I'm guessing that anyways.
  Insulting things that you don't understand is an indication of stupidity.
  
  It was a very well written essay and happens with various levels of harshness in schools in the developed world, it depends on the teachers and the subject matter as to how severely the groups are defined.
  reply
• 

  amber

  1 year ago

  I'm pretty much a nerd in high school right now, and i think your essay is really good, and mostly correct. i think that i might have gotten a bit lucky though, because there're a lot of nerds at my school and while almost none of us are popular, we're not so much bullied as mostly ignored. School almost always seems pointless, too. i mean, when will i ever need to recite the different types of igneous rock or anything?
  reply
• 

  Dutton

  1 year ago

  So what does it mean to have something real to do? For the most part, the adult world seems to have answered that question with "survival." Not particularly inspiring, yet what more is being pursued by the vast majority of people? When we work as an employee to fulfill the responsibilities of our position we are working to increase the profit and thereby ensure the survival of the company. We do it not because we personally care about the company, in most cases, but simply because we wish to be paid a salary that will allow us to survive. We have kids so that we gain an illusory sense of surviving forever, through successive generations. A few even seek to excel in their professions to leave a name or some other public landmark behind after they die, a part of them that will survive on after their body has ceased to be.
  
  I would say the meaninglessness of the teen years is mirrored by the meaninglessness of the mid-life crisis years, after career success has topped out and the kids have gone off to college. Nowadays people in that age group seem to have found renewed meaning through trying to survive longer, thus becoming obsessed with health fads. Or they want to survive into other lives through reincarnation, and so take up spiritual paths.
  
  I suspect the only reason teens feel the sub-society they are in is meaningless is because their survival needs are taken care of by others. Ask a gang banger in the projects who doesn't always get food for dinner reliably provided by a struggling working parent or a strung out junkie parent how bored he is with life. He probably is disinterested in school except as his marketplace for the drugs he will sell to finance a trip to Burger King and hopefully some bling and more. Suburban middle class comfort is what has made all of life so irrelevant to the teens you write about.
  
  What I want to know is, do we humans ever get past mere survival as the answer to life meaning? I don't want to come up with better ways to make people of any age group feel like they can meaningfully contribute to survival issues, and so foster a more organized and meritorious social system for them to live in. That would be better than the current situation, but still not good enough, still just a delay of existential angst until the later years. Is this all there is to human existence, merely to exist?
  reply
• 

  Ron B.

  1 year ago

  I thought this was very well written and forwarded this to half our friends. We had our own subculture in high school precisely becasue we realized how fake the whole thing was, and we wanted to get out into the real world. And after a college education where I went out and studied everything about the real world I could, I have to say I'm very happy with my life. I certainly wouldn't trade it for anyone else's.
  
  I think Penny Arcade summed it up perfectly:
  http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/10/28
  reply
• 

  Anne*

  1 year ago

  This is a really great essay, and since I'm in high school myself, I know exactly what you're talking about. I was a nerd in elementary school, and though I may not be called that in high school, I can be considered as one of the smarter people in my class. The only reason why I'm probably not viewed as that because I do associate with the "popular" kids and I don't put them on a "pedestal" as most teenagers my age do. I really feel that action should be taken to change the stereotypical high school world because it hurts me to see the smarter individuals in my school breaking under the pressure of what their own classmates put on them. Sometimes, I do come home from school and wonder why school seems so pointless. It makes life seem like a dull and cruel place. All I want to do right now is to escape what seems like a dead-end life and experience greater things. Does anybody know any way that I can help stop this? Because I really want to make things better for the good of future generations.
  reply
• 

  nerds.have.all.the.fun

  1 year ago

  I loved reading this. You discussed things that I've always wondered about myself, and for that I thank you.
  
  =) (Sorry, just had to throw that out there.)
  reply
• 

  taille

  1 year ago

  i just read this, and i can honestly say that i am one of those popular kids, i am not trying to rub it in or anything but i too admit that i have lived for what other people say for the past 4 years. i am currently in my last year of highschool and it is sad that i only realized this now, but after reading your essay i've realized that there is nothing wrong with being smart, or even being popular, but if it prevents you from being who you are then that is something we should all worry about
  reply
• 

  Sheila Casey

  1 year ago

  I graduated from high school almost 30 years ago and this essay caused me to muse on my own position in high school. The author makes a great point, altho the defining atttribute is not IQ. It is caring more about something--anything--other than social approval. Some people, and I know I was one of them, have a strong sense of self and aren't dependent on approval from others to feel good about themselves.
  
  I don't think it would be possible to rank myself popularity-wise, in high school. I paid attention to my own friends and my own projects and didn't notice what the other people were doing, I was too busy with my own stuff.
  
  By the time you become an adult, most people have become less dependent on social approval and more willing to be who they really are. It sounds like kids are more insecure now than they were in the 70s. That's sad.
  
  Just aim for self-love and the rest will take care of itself. You can't please everybody, so find the people you respect and enjoy and they will be easy to please!
  reply
• 

  Sherman

  1 year ago

  It's interesting to see most of the disagreements come along with incomplete sentences, funny grammar and awful spelling. I think this proves all.
  reply
• 

  Emily

  1 year ago

  Haha, that's what I thought too. XD
  reply
• 

  Emily

  1 year ago

  I really, really enjoyed reading this. I am already a senior, currently attending high school, and I always wondered about this. I know for a fact that I am not a genius but I am an artist. Which is sad, because you don't find a lot of artist/s around regular high school. So most of the time I feel like I don't fit in. My friends in middle school got popular after 9th grade. They dressed and acted differently to make themselves to fit in and it really makes you want to vomit. Ew! XD Anyhow the fact is that I don't feel comfortable around those type of people. Thank god for giving me a chance to be able to meet new friends during my senior year. I never realize it until recently but I just love to hang out with nerds, dorks, in general smart people. I feel like I can actually relate to them and they are awesome!! How I see it at my school is that the way you dress already shows where you belong. It's quite sad. But I do agree nerds get the upper deck once they are put out in society, while the dumb ones lives in huts or somehow manage to live through paycheck to paycheck. =]
  
  P.S. Please excuse me for my bad use of grammar.
  reply
• 

  French Cat

  1 year ago

  Excellent article, a pearl of intelligence.
  
  It is astonishing to realize how much you are right by comparing schools and prisons, especially by reading this sentence in your reply to the comments that followed your article: "At my school, it was easy not to learn anything, but hard to get out of the building without getting caught."
  
  However, I disagree with what is according to you the cause -or at least one of the causes- of that situation; you said:
  "I'm just guessing here, but I think it may be because American school systems are decentralized. They're controlled by the local school board, which consists of car dealers who were high school football players, instead of some national Ministry of Education run by PhDs."
  
  French schools are not controlled locally but by the Ministére de l'Education Nationale (Ministry of National Education), and the problems are the same than in the US schools. At the time I was at school, we didn't have the same kind of categories you can find in the US schools (I'm speaking about "Freaks", "Nerds", "Popular ones", etc.), but the situation was precisely the same: being smart meant being bullied, and it's still the rule nowadays.
  Besides, from what I've heard thanks to people who are working (not as teachers, but as wardens whose work force them to be closer from the children and the micro-societies they create than school teacher) in French schools presently, this trend has eventually gained these schools: pupils separate themselves in affiliated groups such as "the gothics", "the skaters" (skate-boarders), "the rappers", etc.
  
  Notice that I've precised that these wardens, are *close* from the children's world, closer than teachers: that's the node of the problem; having a statist national ministry in charge of schools run by PhDs won't be a solution as they, as well as the teachers and local school directors, won't have a real idea of what's actually going on in schools, being too far of the everyday life of (bullied) children to see anything.
  
  So the solution, IMO, is "simply" to change the whole school system. Easier to say than to do, obviously; anyway I think that a good thing to do so as to expose the problem would be to make a documentary showing the daily life of a nerd at school, which won't certainly done or at least not before a long period of time...
  
  By the way, a couple of days ago, in a French school yet not known to be a "difficult" one (understand by the euphemism "difficult": "ruled by violence from local gangs"), a teenager has stabbed another teenager for, what was previously thought, apparently no reason.
  But the reason has been discovered later: they had a quarrel about "which one would rule the school".
  
  ... Prisoners stabs each others so as to determine "who rules the prison" too... :]
  
  FC
  reply
• 

  Carol

  1 year ago

  You achieved the seemingly impossible - you made sense of the high school mentality! Great article and so true.
  reply
• 

  AnotherNerdThere

  1 year ago

  Not so harsh Paul ! That system persecutes its better elements .. Such a stupid scuttling. Not the work of a nerd, be sure.
  reply
• 

  Marcus

  1 year ago

  i thought the essay was insightful in several ways. It shed light on several of the contributing factors which create this "prisoner's dilemma" including the contributions of the environment (suburbia) as well as the impact of modern methods of social stratification on human behavior.
  
  I was called a nerd twice, that i can remember. I really abhorred that idea. But i think people, over time, had a problem labeling me because my social network was vast and crossed a lot of boundaries. And the attempts at labeling me really ended when i started playing football and after i started driving to school. As I began to buy-in to "acceptable" modes of social participation, I became more palatable.
  
  But things I chose to do in high school, were guided mostly by my own volition. I was really trying to be popular - at school anyway.
  I didn't feel particularly popular at home. And I wonder if that is what made me prey for the other kids. Could they sense that I didn't feel that acceptable to my parents?
  So I wonder what the quality of the relationships between the parents and the kids who consider themselves - and are social labeled- as popular.
  I've spent almost as much time as adult as I did as a child.
  I think popularity and conformity still plays a factor. People still admire people that have money, are good looking, socially adept, fame, and high positional authority. But I suppose its easier to surround yourself by many people who think as you do as an adult. So if you want to remain socially awkward and focus on being really smart then you can do so relatively comfortably as an adult rather the closed system of junior high and high school.
  reply
• 

  Marcus

  1 year ago

  Correction - I wasn't really trying to be popular - at school anyway.
  reply
• 

  A

  1 year ago

  absolutely brilliant, you've mentioned things which i've always wondered about and even though i am still in high school, i am mature enough to understand what ur rambling on about. i live in the UK currently and things aren't very different here either although maybe less extreme than in the US... great work though!
  reply
• 

  Aaron

  1 year ago

  I read hackers and painters, and i have to say.. This is helpful, it really is. I just want to let you know that you're changing lives
  reply
• Comment removed.
• 

  Tim

  1 year ago

  It is ridiculous to see you write that and know that you actually believe it. I personally cannot understand why you talk about "gay" as if it were a bad word, like "stupid". You think nerds get a hard time in school? How about a little consideration for the homosexuals? What makes you think they choose to be that way? There are so many little things in life that we "choose" to be. It's a wonder that we can change it as much as we can, seeing how society tried to block us into our molds and solidify us. Nerds don't choose to be nerds, because even though we say that they choose to pursue intelligence before popularity, that was decided for them by the way they were brought up, by other factors that influence their lives. In the same way, people don't choose to be gay, so stop tossing the word around like it's some type of filth!
  reply
• 

  Blade Learing

  1 year ago

  You mean the nerds choose to be nerds by not acting popular?
  
  Dude, bad lag, the article already said that.
  
  The only thing you added is an implication that not TRYING to be popular is a bad thing.
  reply
• 

  Eo

  1 year ago

  For me, the worst has been high school. All my friends in middle school were tried and true best-friends from elementary school, with a few others later on; I was actually fairly popular (despite being a little weirdo with hair that tangled into knots within five minutes, and who sat like a gargoyle, unable to put knees down) because people knew I had friends, and I also happened to have a ton of confidence. It helped a lot that this was in the middle of the city, and most people at the school were poor, so my cheap clothes weren't a source of mockery.
  
  When I entered my highschool, in mountainous suburbia, life abruptly became hell. I knew absolutely nobody, not a soul. My hair, way of sitting (I still do that; I've realized with some pride that I sit like L from Death Note), my baggy and INCREDIBLY unfashionable clothes, and the fact that I knew the answers and didn't suppress them to look like a hot little idiot (the ideal girl at my school) were a source of vicious mockery.
  
  Being a girl, I don't get beat up; however, my combined oddities seemed, by late September of the first semester of Freshman year, to have convinced most of the school that I was literally retarded. After all, how could a person not straighten their hair, dye it platinum blonde in streaks, wear skintight jeans and T-shirts or miniskirts... etc.
  
  The problem is that my highschool is entirely composed of people who are at least in the middle-middle class; people who aren't can't afford to live around the school. Most people are rich or upper middle class. I am probably in the upper low or the lower middle; our house was cheap, and we don't spend money on the stupid yuppie things that everyone else does. These people have lived in this town all of their lives, in most cases, and believe, as you said, that this is actually Life. They believe that MTV is an accurate representation of what they should aspire to; the bar for appearance is set outrageously high, because my classmates can afford it.
  
  Last year culminated in the mysterious leaking of the information that my role model happens to be Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. After a day of bullying, missed assignments, loneliness at lunch and generic mockery in the halls, at a time where I was in tech week for a musical, was too depressed to eat almost at all the whole week, and danced six hours a night in rehearsal -- I'd had enough. I was walking to the bus home, getting snowballs thrown at me, and trying to ignore someone who was just being stupid and annoying, about Naruto or some crappy show. Anthony, one of the biggest jerks in the school (and, predictably, a star on the football team) spotted me and began, loudly, to trumpet like an elephant.
  
  It was about then I was going to just stand there and scream at the whole situation, when one of the special ed kids walked up and hugged me and said it was all right. Great kid, and for a while after that, I was almost happy when people whispered about my 'retardation'.
  
  Thought I'd share that story -- Anyway; I love this article. A lot of the time, I get fed up with school in the extreme; I'm only in second semester of sophomore year, and things are unbearable again. My (violently bullied) friend from back downtown loves this article too; it helps make a little bit of sense of our stupid high school lives. When I feel like just quitting, I read this article, usually in conjunction with The True History of the Elephant Man.
  reply
• 

  ---

  1 year ago

  I thought this was definitely worth reading. I'm a 17 year old highschooler and noticed a lot of good points. There were some that I never even thought of, while others seemed to critical (sorry I'm not more specific.) Anyway, I think that you can be smart and popular. However, the kids that try the hardest to be popular usually are the most popular. In any event though, popularity is determined before most kids even realize it. Looking back on my schooling before highschool even I wanted to kick my own ass. I'm just as smart now, and still have free time for sports and friends, however, I already have to worry about a reputation that is no longer like me.
  Actually, I'm not even sure where I'm going with this... I thought it was an excellent essay that provided a lot of insight, good job and thanks.
  reply
• 

  123

  1 year ago

  The most popular kids do not torture the nerds because they do not feel outranked by them.... most likely because of similar physical attributions. And then the middle classes notice that these nerds are not taking any heat from the most popular kids…. while the middle classes are taking plenty of heat from them…. so the middle classes do what people do best and spread the hate.
  
  Maybe the nerds have more in common with most popular kids than think. It seems to me you had enough time to draw a map and label people with your ranking. I doubt most people took the time in school to do this. So in your own way you contributed to social rankings; only I doubt you ever had the nerve to share your map with anyone outside of your ranking. Because you'd be stopped... most likely by one of the most popular kids. I mean this is the first I ever heard of someone drawing a map for this purpose… and I doubt you would have ever posted this map for others to see…. instead you gave it power by keeping it to yourself and only those you trusted could see it.
  
  What is even more interesting to me is…. I wonder if this secretive world of your map drawing and the most popular kids scheming is really so different. You say a girl was afraid of being made fun of for being seen with a nerd because her friends would make fun of her. Well isn’t that telling in itself. It appears that the most popular kids would make fun of the middle classes for talking to nerds, instead of the most popular kids being mean to the nerds themselves. So the nerds went on thinking the most popular kids are the most popular because their not so bad, but the truth of it is just as the middle classes were unaware of cafeteria maps…. nerds were unaware of the real reason the middle classes were treating them so badly.
  
  So wouldn’t it be interesting if the middle classes found out about the cafeteria map that categorized popularity then the middle classes may appear more justified in their cruelty towards nerds… and then if the nerds found out just who was making fun of the middle classes for talking to nerds-the most popular kids. Then what would be…. Probably both the middle classes and nerds would try to better themselves and not be so judgmental leaving the most popular kids to fend for themselves.
  
  But before I jump down the throats of people who screwed me over….my question is… do we need to be divided to become united? And is that what the most popular kids are guilty of…. division? Lastly is it purely in their self-interest or without it is life more chaotic?
  
  I always thought of the most popular kids as such a tightly knit group while everyone else was more scattered. But the reality is they've already turned on each other so since they are self proclaimed survivors they ensure that others do the same but all the while keeping things on an even keel.
  reply
• 

  123

  1 year ago

  My feeling is some popular kids or as I have come to know come to call the self proclaimed popular kids come from some disadvantage whether its parents who are tyrannical, have some physical abnormality like a 3rd nipple, or whatever... either way high school literally plays itself out as survival of the unfit. And they will do whatever necessary to shine light on others inadequacies to secure their place at the top of the food chain. Its that saying do not start a fight with someone who has more to lose. And its usually the nerd who willingly backs down from a fight. But maybe its just the guy hes up against has some body image complex and is jacked up on steroids- either way you get my point.
  reply
• 

  Mozen greezin

  1 year ago

  The best thing to do with the school system would be to dismantle it.
  reply
• 

  Leonard

  1 year ago

  as a quasi-nerd from the sixties I identify with your premise, college prep and some college , made my money as a carpenter, using mostly what I knew by age 10 essays ARE FOR EFFECT. Surfing in all form is, however, real. Unfortunately the social groups set up in High school seem to follow many through life. The "experts" in addictive sciences say a person stops growing socially when their addictions begin to bloom. From my perspective, growing up in the 50s and 60s in the outskirts of LA it appears true.
  reply
• 

  jas

  1 year ago

  I am the average kid, in secondary school. I'm 13/f and seriously think that this article does has a point. But sometimes, and believe me i watched it happen, when someone wants to be popular...It doesn't work. Because the populars kids don't want you to be popular. Trying to be popular just is natural to anyone, and your right, most people in their right mind would never want to be popular.
  Why?
  Because we know the back stabbing, the rumours, the bitchy lies, and (the worst) wearing the wrong thing! Who the heck would want to try to be perfect ALL the time?
  reply
• 

  anonymous

  1 year ago

  this essay is really brilliant.
  we are from Brazil (we will actually enter in high-school this year, but we don't think it may be very different), and here the life for nerds seems to be easier than in the United States... anyway, we have always been very criticized (sadly even by teachers) for our unusual habits. those teachers always said that we should "go out" more and "study less" (believe us, some teachers actually have said this to us in a serious way). many students have also made fun of us for the fact that we prefer to stay home and read about history and learn math than playing sports like most people in this age do.
  we just like the way we are, it doesn't hurt us; studying (not just school-related material) is a good practice and it doesn't affect people around us in any negative way, so why do they complain? why do they think that we should go out and "have fun" (in their own opinion) just because other people do? can't studying be fun?
  "fun" doesn't have an universal meaning; each one should be able to define fun as the things they like to do, so if we like to stay home and study, it's fun for us. fun doesn't always have to be "going out" and "socializing", and doing what the majority likes to do: not everyone has to like going out. someone has actually said us once: "you can't dislike going out, because NO ONE I know dislikes it.": this person certainly didn't understand that each person has a different taste.
  we also thought that WE were the ones who had some kind of problem, but now we realize that they (those who judge us by our unusual taste) are the ones who are misunderstanding the whole thing.
  we come from a "family of nerds", and we like being part of one, because our family supports us and understands us. some people think that nerd habits are undiscussably wrong, but they are being very small-minded.
  we liked what you said about American high-schools having no purpose. we also think that many teachers preffer to give students long and pointless work with the only purpose being the grades: the point shouldn't be the grades, it should be the learning.
  we also liked the comparison of the American high-school with a prison: we compare it with a jungle. one thing that we noticed here where we live is that, until 4th grade, the teachers always emphasized that they are like mothers. but, from 5th grade on, there started to be more than 1 teacher, and those many teachers for each class seemed not to care about the students' behaviour anymore, and that may be the point where their minds start to become completely twisted.
  the word for "nerd" in Brazil is "CDF" (an acronym in Portuguese which means "iron head"), meaning someone who studies very much. but what we don't understand is that "CDF" is used as an offense, and most people don't like being called that way. but why? what do most people dislike so much about people that like studying? this is strange, and certainly has something to do with the failing educational system, which is very bad here in Brazil.
  this is of course the situation in a whole different country, but it is very similar.
  NOTE: feel free to correct our English, if necessary.
  reply
• 

  leo

  1 year ago

  Amazing. I really like that. It really helps those nerds who arent introspective to realize that, and usually those that havent dont have the time to condition themselves
  reply
• 

  chelz

  1 year ago

  I'm a 17 year old nerd and there's no way in hell I'd want to be in the popular crowd, the guys all seem like horny jerks and the girls are mostly ditzy drama-queens. But just because one is a nerd doesn't mean he/she is unacceptable or gets pushed around at all. I'm a straight A student and a real science fanatic, but I don't take shit from anybody and consequently nobody gives me problems because they know I'll just throw it back in their faces, and those who don't know that learn quickly the first time they try anything. I'm usually the one pushing preps out of my way in the halls and if someone is being picked on I'm usually one of the people that glares the bully down and gets in his face until he lays off the other kid. But I'm not mean to popular people that don't cause problems, I'm never really offensive just defensive so I'm not a bully. As I said before, I am a nerd with no fear of what popular people think, for example I broke in on a drinking party once with my airsoft pistol and managed on my own to shoot every person there and took their alcohol and poured it down the sink. The abercrombie preps were too scared I was going to shoot them again to try to salvage their alcohol. But I don't hold it against them and I didn't tell their parents and even offered them rides home, so they don't hate me or anything and even if they did that would be their problem. And I don't think I have one nerdy friend who feels depressed about his social status or resentful of the popular people, because my group of nerds is completely happy with the great friends we have. If you're gonna enjoy your high school life as a nerd, it works best to have no shame and no fear and find stuff that makes you admirably different, (like I'm a female science nerd that plays paintball with the guys,) and to find a bunch of happy friends to mock society with. This was a great essay with a lot of good and relevant points, but I don't think it said enough about the group of strong-minded nerds that don't submit.
  
  I do like everything stated about the school system though, I never thought about it that way - that school is just an institution for storing kids until they become of use. Although for the first half of my day I attend regular high school and am force-fed all the useless (for me at least) facts about history and rhetorical analysis, the second half of my day is spent at a magnet school full of specialized courses in math and science that are very useful, and the teachers genuinely care about turning us into the best scientists we can become. So I do agree that in general school is exactly as the author interpreted it, but the point of my whole response is that there are always exceptions.
  
  
  (p.s. I don't know if anyone has pointed this out yet because I didn't read all the responses, but there is a grammatical error in this essay. 10 points to anybody that can find it.)
  reply
• 

  Alfred

  1 year ago

  "But to who?"
  
  It ought to be "whom."
  reply
• 

  SJ

  1 year ago

  The use of 'till' is also incorrect ;)
  Great essay.
  reply
• 

  pushkina

  1 year ago

  These are the grammatical problems I found in your response:
  
  "But I'm not mean to popular people that don't cause problems,"
  ...instead of 'that' should use 'who' because you are speaking of people instead of inanimate objects...
  
  "it works best to have no shame and no fear and find stuff that makes you admirably different, (like I'm a female science nerd that plays paintball with the guys,) and to find a bunch of happy friends to mock society with"
  should be: "to find a bunch of happy friends with whom one can mock society" [best not to end a sentence with a preposition..]
  reply
• 

  Bobby Rio

  1 year ago

  Great points.. I am going to have to link to this article.... I've started a complete program titled "how to be popular in high school" on my site... I haven't addressed many of the issues that you've brought up and I think this will compliment my progra nicely
  reply
• 

  sabinaq

  1 year ago

  Hi... I like your article, it rings true for me. My question is, why is this so much more true of North American secondary school, than secondary schools in Europe, for example? I'm Canadian, and experienced much the same kind of thing as you describe, so I would say that Canada and the USA share the same model of High School. However, things seem different here in Europe. I live in Spain, and have been here for 5 years. Prior to this I lived in Norway for 9 years. In both places what I have seen is really different from what I lived through in my own high school years. Kids in these countries seem much more integrated into the "real" world, and much less isolated from it than in the US and Canada. 2 things come to mind:
  1. The kids seem more connected to the adult world, to adults in general. Less suspicious of adults, more trusting of them; they seem to have more of a feeling of sharing the same world, and of thus being less like prisoners, and more like interns... people who are at a different stage of their experience, but in the same shared space as the adults.
  2. The kids seem less polarized into popular and unpopular groups. I haven't seen kids who are typical "unpopular" kids here in Spain. I don't remember seeing any in Norway either. Yes, there are groups of kids, groups of friends, but I haven't seen the unpopular ones as clearly as I have seen them in Canada and the US. I think they exist here, but there seem to be fewer of them, proportionately. The structures of the social groupings the kids are in seem less rigid to me, here.
  
  All of this begs the question of why it is different in North America. I don't know - but I would like to!
  reply
• 

  madmatthew

  1 year ago

  Fascinating essay. Thanks for it. But as the parent of a high schooler, I can tell you that (admittedly from the outside) things seem significantly more humane for nerds and misfits in the '00s than they were in the '70s. I think Bill Gates has had an impact... though of course athletic talent still seems to trump all. But today there are math and science magnet schools, varsity letters for stuff like band and choir and academic achievement. And there seems to be much more attention being paid to vocational education, and no, not just in auto shop, which is where you seem to be going with your plea to make high school work have more relevance to what we all do in the real world. (One of my 17-year-old son's math tests recently consisted of real-world packaging problems that could be solved with equations.) And there seems to be significantly less toleration for open bullying and physical violence. However, it's still tough -- my 16-year-old 4.0 GPA daughter recently went through a "breakup" with a close female friend that featured absolutely stunning psychological warfare. But I have to hope that voices like yours are breaking through.
  reply
• 

  al

  1 year ago

  "Teenagers seem to have respected adults more then, because the adults were the visible experts in the skills they were trying to learn"
  Do you really think so ?....
  
  just read this
  
  
  The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
  
  this is by the way from socrates c.470 BC - 399 BC
  
  I like your text but some of you theories are way off ;).
  I guess you are not an expert on many topics you write about ...thats somehow dangerous.But when you keep it simple with eating tables ranked A to F you are good.
  
  "The cause of this problem is the same as the cause of so many present ills: specialization"
  
  so why is that an ILL ? I am pretty sure no generation hat more whealts, health (lived longer) and more knowledge...So why is it ILL ?
  reply
• 

  SEb

  1 year ago

  Nerds aren't one step ahead, they simply lack social intelligence which is replaced by additional skills in subjects like (i know this is stereotypical) math, physics, chemistrie and (not so much though) biology.
  reply
• 

  SS

  1 year ago

  To the previous poster:
  To me (a nerd, and proud of it), there are two types of nerds. There are the kind who lack social intelligence, but they are generally happy where they are. And then there are the kind who are very socially aware. They have a tough time, because they don't fit in, don't really want to fit in, but don't want to be a loner. Anyway, there you go.
  reply
• 

  dat chick

  1 year ago

  i think the essay was good .... and it made sense .. but than as i thought about the popularity of people in my highschool its complitely different because the most popular people in my highchool are also some of the best students too .... only some smart kids get made fun of and it has nothing to do with how smart they are .. its just because of their personality and because of the fact that they think they are so much smarter than other students and they think that other students are dumn but the reality is .. they are just as smart as them .. they just chose to go out and play sports and not study as much .... if these "smart" kids were so smart they wouldnt be wasting their time making maps of how popular people are ....if these kids are so smart why cant they figure it out that they just chose to not be popular ... if they are so smart why cant they find happines .. the thing is as seb said "they simply lack social intelligence " and thats why i think they are considered outcasts .. and not because they are too smart ... i dont know if this made snese .. because sometimes i dont express myself clearly but i hope it did... anyway peace ...
  reply
• 

  Linda

  1 year ago

  Guys there is a world outside America, i.e. the world, which experiences similar problems. I can say from experience, that unpopularity is not about being intelligent or not being intellegent, in my personal opinion. Popular people can be very smart, unpopular people can be lacking. So in my opinion it is about being "different", especially in school which is a primitive introduction to adulthood (but an important one). Anything outside the square threatens people for some reason, it's human nature to conform to what is safe and known. My only encouragement is to be excepting of "different". This will enable you to grow as a human being, to allow your focus to be on your inside, not on everyone else's outside. Maybe smarter people realise this truth early, where as people focused on popularity (ie: outer) need abit more time purely to realise what is more important. The thing I wish to convay is compassion, acceptance and non-judgement of all people is a stronger place to live.
  Focus on what's important, and try to never loose compassion for people, because we are all the same deep down. Hope this makes sense from a 101 year old all the way from Australia....
  reply
• 

  S

  1 year ago

  It's not just public schools that have this problem. I go to a Catholic high school and I have actually tripped on purpose and sprained my ankle ju