The Price of Being Smart

Background Info: COTDT lives in Southern California, USA, and goes to Rowland High School. He is making his own DiskMag, which is called WORLD DOMINATION. Get it when it's out! Although this article is about the United States, I'm sure people in other countries should find this interesting.

One day during my 8th grade year, I was sitting in the school cafeteria my myself, watching the kids at the other tables laugh and have fun, plotting how I was going to get home early and start playing Quake. And then. . . . I suddenly got it. I was a geek. I was never going to be like them. They were never going to let me in. I read books and played video games, while everyone else were going to parties. People made fun of me, just because I spent my time memorizing Pi, 2000 digits of them. "You have no life," they told me. After some time, there's an accumulation of slights, hurts, and realizations. You don't have a lot of friends, other kids avoid you, you're not good at sports or interested in shopping, and the things you like aren't the same things most other people like. The alienation is sometimes mild, sometimes savage. Sometimes it lasts for a few years, sometimes a lifetime. It all depends on where you live, who your parents are, whether if there's a single teacher who appreciates you, and how well you can hide your brains. Increasingly, your escape is in technology. You play computer games to slay tormentors on the screen even if you can't do much about the ones at school.

Later on in my life, I've been branded as a nerd, and as a geek several times. But what exactly is a nerd? And what exactly is a geek? And so I looked it up in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

nerd – noun, a clumsy, foolish person

geek – noun, from Middle Low German geck. A carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose actusually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake.

Ok.... that wasn't the definition I was looking for... So I looked up the word Computer Geek.

computer geek – noun, one who eats (computer) bugs for a living.

Ok, that also wasn't the definition I was looking for. But we all know that geek and nerd both mean the same thing, though with slightly different connotations. They're people who are smart but from reading too much and staying indoors too much they have become socially unacceptable. But geeks and nerds aren't the only people that are socially unacceptable. Anyone differing from what's considered the norm would end up being tortured by other kids.

The shootings at Columbine High School have vanished from the news a long time ago, but their underlying causes remain in place, and no one seems to want to confront what may be the most difficult issue of all. Sure they had guns and bombs and everything, and people think that if we only had better gun control it and other school shootings would be prevented. This is obviously not true; they'll get their weapons in other ways. I mean, the two shooters DID make several bombs on their own, after all. No, the reason why they wanted to kill people is because of how they were treated in their high school. They were trapped and suffocated, and yet their peers and teachers would provide them with no air. The jocks made their lives miserable. In fact the only group the police were certain they were targeting were the jocks. The two shooters were outcasts, a product of American high school. In fact, Columbine is no different than any other American high school. High schools where being different has a price, and being smart has a price.

The high school experience of many children would read like a horror novel. The brightest, smartest, and most creative children have to hide or redirect their creativity in an environment that does not value it. Being smart is a detriment to being popular. The misfits aren't the kids who engage in underage drinking. The misfits aren't the kids who go to the bathroom during class so they can smoke pot. The misfits aren't the kids who go to wild parties and don't come home until 3AM. The misfits are the ones who get good grades and score well on the SATs. The misfits are the ones who answer questions when teachers ask them. The misfits are the ones who study their Econ. or Physics books during Academic Decathlon breaks instead of playing cards. The misfits are the ones who aren't afraid to form an opinion that might not be popular, and say it in front of class. But misfits often break under the pressure. They're disturbed and desperate enough to do outrageous things. Even though only very few of these misfits have turned to violence, just TOO MANY have fantasized about it. This doesn't excuse the people who go out and shoot people. But to sit back and ignore these issues while focusing on media violence and computer-game violence just shows that Americans aren't bold enough to confront the truth. The real issues are being ignored.

Our high schools do not value knowledge. Instead they value athletic and social abilities. Why, if we're so worried about poor overall test scores and worsening academic performance, do we continue to sneer at the nerds, who are actually concentrating on getting an education? In Europe and Asia, the reverse is true. People there value Academic ability over Athletic ability. Growing up in China, I was valued for my intellectual capabilities until I came to the United States, where all of a sudden those same skills pushed me down to the bottom of the social pyramid. What are we encouraging with such attitudes, especially when our society desperately needs these types of people? No wonder they say Americans are so stupid.

But even with this very serious problem in our high schools, there is much we can do to help. So next time you see a geek, talk to them and be nice to them. Don't just let them sit in the corner. Be nice to them so when they become your boss they'll also be nice to you. Indeed, the definition of "geek" no longer has anything to do with biting the head off a chicken.

Your feedback is welcome.

- COTDT (email me! cotdt@hotmail.com)