1/4/10

The Nerd Issue

Family entertainment tonight consisted of pot pies and Aliens In the Attic.  It's highly entertaining, especially for anyone who ever played Street Fighter.

The main character in the movie (at least the main character that isn't a CGI mini alien) is a nerd.  He purposefully fails his classes in order to fit in.  The sad thing is that I have known kids who have done just that.  The stigma of being smart, of being different was too much for them to handle.  The pressure to fit in won. 

Luckily for me, I never had a strong desire to fit in.  My parents taught me that different was just fine as long as the different was in a good way.  I was taught from an early age that being smart was a good thing.  No doubt some of that was having a math teacher for a mother and a science teacher for a father that I could look up to.  Not only were they smart, they were respected and well liked.  I hope that my two boys, with a mechanical engineer for a father and a chemical engineer for a mother will come to the same conclusion I did years ago.  Not only is being a nerd okay, it is a lot of fun.

1 comment:

  1. The other route is a complete disregard for what others think of you, which can be a lot of fun, or cause you to end up like an old Willie Nelson song. "Them that don't know him won't like him and them that do sometimes won't know how to take him. He ain't wrong, he's just different, and his pride won't let him do things to make you think he's right."

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