khaki

Grades demonstrate hard work, not intelligence.

wildchartermage

nerds are cool! lol....

AUlostchick

Smart =/= nerd. I know plenty of smart people who were definitely not nerds in high school. Nerd is now more synonymous with geek/dork, aka into "weird stuff", rather than meaning "very intelligent". However, quite often, liking weird things (sci-fi, comic books, fantasy games, fairies, etc) and being very intelligent coincide. Most of the people I know who like all those things ARE really smart.

AznN3rd

^ I completely agree. Smart people can be popular, and nerds can be smart. It just so happens that most nerds don't really care about being popular anyways. The worst case are the nerds that want to be popular, but lack the social skills to be so. They are not content with their friends and want to be with a group that doesn't accept them, leaving them in despair and misery through HS. Perhaps the OP falls in this category?

AznN3rd

I find stereotypes to be much more prevalent in middle school than high school.

blu_g8orade

do you guys that call yourselves "nerds" seriously get made fun of just for being smart? that stuff still happens in high schools? i thought the days of being shoved in lockers were over, lol

but seriously... you can definitely be smart and not be a nerd. play a sport, or if you aren't athletic at least play decent attention to how you dress and how you carry yourself. make SOME effort to get some nice clothes once in a while. like say if you're a girl, get yourself some abercrombie/hollister or something. or if you're a guy get some nice polos, jeans, and shoes. when people see a kid that they thought was a nerd, and they're wearing some pretty fashionable clothes, they tend to give you a little more respect and you gain some cool points. it's a stupid way of thinking, but hey, it's high school.

and if you wanna be popular, you have to come off as a pretty cool person. you can't be all introverted. you have to be able to talk to people without looking/sounding clumsy, esp the opposite sex. and don't be one of those corny kids, the ones who tell you lame jokes and start laughing like its funny, when really they're just annoying you.

welp. thats my guide

Prothero

Lol I don't think that stuff happens anymore...well at least I haven't seen it.

But there's definitely a lot of superficiality. If you have cool clothes on, that MUST mean that you are cool...wish I had figured that out sooner.

khaki

Honestly it seems to me like people here are just speaking in generalities about what the typical high school experience is "supposed to be." I obviously can't speak about your schools, so things could be totally different there, but a lot of what's being said here is just downright wrong.

First of all, nobody I know (and I am friends with people across the popularity spectrum) really cares what BRAND of clothes you wear. Now, I don't engage in conversations of this type as much as some of my females friend do, to be sure, but it seems to me like a much bigger issue is how good your clothes look on you. Again, perhaps public school is different, but "OMG ABERCROMIE YOU ARE COOL" does not exist in any way, shape, or form here.

I think there's actually a lot of evidence on this forum for nerds not necessarily being smarter than anyone else. Notice all those "downward trend" threads? I've read a bunch of them that essentially boiled down to people complaining about how they "got into a relationship" and they grades plummeted. What does this mean? One of the following:

• These people have horrendous organization skills and can't balance more than one responsibility. In this case, their ECs are either fraudulent or do not exist, in which case most good colleges will be a stretch for them anyway.
• These people are spending literally all of their time with their new boyfriend/girlfriend, and suddenly don't have enough time to do ANY work anymore.
• Anybody with reasonable intelligence can get good grades in high school if they put in enough work. Most "nerds" put in more than enough work because they have no social alternatives, thus gaining them the "smart" moniker because of their grades. Seriously, with enough work you can even make standardized test scores better. People here constantly talk about studying for stuff like the AIME. Seriously, ***? That test is designed to test your problem-solving abilities, not your past-problem-memorizing abilities.

Anyway, the point I am getting at here is that the smart -> nerd stereotype is overplayed. I know plenty of popular people who are smart (I like to consider myself one, although there are certainly more popular people than me around, although that's partially my fault for alienating a bunch of people). My theory is that "nerds" typically lack social skills and then spend all of their resulting free time working on school, which makes them appear superficially intelligent. Of course, there are also genuinely brilliant introverts... I don't mean to overgeneralize here.

Finally, I think a little social savvy could solve a lot of people's problems. Buying clothes that fit rather than ones that are 2-3 sizes too big like most guys' buy makes someone look ten times better, and doesn't take "all of someone's time" like the article suggest. Having body language that doesn't project "people hate me and I'm a social reject" also helps, but that's less easy to control for most people.

In conclusion, while typical high school students definitely do suck, particularly for their treatment of the less-socially-apt, many "nerds" aren't actually as smart as people make them out to be.

EDIT: I like how "W-T-F," which is essentially self-censoring, is censored here.

Zamzam

4 of the top 5 students at my school (including the val and sal) are good-looking, popular athletes.

We're all secretly jealous.

mercruz

You'd be surprised. Many "nerds" at my school are some of the biggest druggies/drunkards/party-hoppers. And I hate this article with a passion. High School is what you will make of it. If you spend the whole time asking others why they don't know Maxwell's Laws off the top of their head, you will appear incredibly condescending. Learn how to be polite and suave and you'll be fine. Stop blaming it on everyone else.

differential

Read some of his other essays. He is not using nerd in the context of someone who just gets good grades and does well in school.

Real nerdyness doesn't show up in HS anyway. Real nerdyness shows up in college. Then, when everyone is more accepting and open, and people have matured, you can see what people are really like. And some people are still hardcore nerds. And I'm not talking just the guy who is on top of his grades and EC's, but rather the guy (or girl!) who sort of lives for studying some or other subject (picture NASA engineers from the 1960's) and thinks of almost nothing else most of the time.

IlikeDice

honestly, who wears jean shorts? they're so damn uncomfortable, and they look terrible.

aristotle1990

Jeans in general are uncomfortable. I can't wear them. I wear khakis or sweatpants or track pants.

mercruz

You can still be passionate about a subject and not come off as a pretentious know-it-all. In fact, those who do not come off as pretentious are also able to persuade others more effectively. Nobody likes to be spoken to like a child.

Spidey1588

I'm a very extroverted "nerd." I'd say that I am somewhat popular; I can hang out with any group of kids. I also have at least a decent taste in clothes. I've been opening up more at school lately, so everyone's a little shocked.