“Can Nerds Ever Be Cool?”
There were only three things I was completely certain about when I started school:
My dad’s brain is the human equivalent to a google search bar,
boys suck and my brother’s sadism towards me only supports that fact, and
I’m going to become a singer and travel the world when I’m old.
As I'm sure most of us experience throughout childhood, growing up seems to be a synonym for kicking all of our beliefs in the ass. Discovering horrific truths like the fact that all this time it was my dad who had been eating the entire plate of cookies (two, often burnt) I so lovingly made for Santa, and the shocking realisation that there were questions not even he could answer, like “Do aliens exist?” and “Why do politicians always lie?” and “Why is Will Smith incapable of aging?”.
Neither did my second belief turn out to be right, which I had to find out the hard way when my so-called ‘friend’ (that bitch) kissed a boy on the cheek, whom I had been passionately exchanging Pokémon cards with. Even my brother and I managed to transform from daily wrestling partners into loving siblings. Not in the Jaime and Cersei Lannister way, but in a I’ll-let-you-borrow-my-nintendo way. Believe me, that was a huge step for both of us.
Despite of all disappointments mentioned above, I have to acknowledge that at least my third belief wasn’t too far away from the truth. I did, indeed, become a singer. An opera singer, to be precise, generally when the bathroom acoustics gave me the most powerful voice while taking a shower. The traveling bit wasn’t even entirely a lie either, considering I’ve moved countries twice now, not being entirely sure how the hell all that happened in my short lifespan of 19 years.
However, the last belief is a little distinctive from the others, purely because of one simple reason: It’s about me. Now would be a good idea to take a seat and buckle up, because we’re about to take a short ego trip back to my childhood, when I knew little about how little I actually knew about myself, and the impact others' perception of me would have on the issue of self-consciousness and crippling feelings of inadequacy.
I started my journey of self-discovery as a naïve and over-enthusiastic first grader, convinced I was going to have the time of my life, simultaneously being in utter denial that anything could go wrong. It all started out fine: the other children were just as nervous as me, holding onto every piece of clothing their parents were wearing that day, but also smiling back whenever I tried to spread my enthusiasm. It was all fun and games in the beginning (in a literal sense) - but then the lessons started.
One might think it’s a positive thing to perform so well in your first year that your teacher suggests you could just skip it and move on to the next one, simply because you’re not being challenged enough. But while my parents showed their deepest pride, my fellow classmates showed nothing but antipathy, perhaps with a dash of jealousy, one crucial ingredients that I couldn't taste at that time. When teachers would call me smart, responsible and proactive, the people I craved validation and acceptance from would call me nerdy, bossy and boring. My free will and confidence, that would have allowed me to decide which assumptions to accept and believe in, were either stuck in traffic or simply decided to be a bunch of arseholes who wouldn’t show their faces anytime soon, so my insecure self started to believe in the less desirable critique from my classmates.
For nearly 9 years, I was convinced that my fate was to be the nerd, who couldn’t possibly be an interesting, cool character, let alone a person worth spending time with. I was torn apart between fulfilling the role of a nerd that had been assigned to me from the self proclaimed cool kids, while desperately seeking recognition and acceptance from them at the same time. So when I let other people define who I was meant to be, I started to adopt that definition and even took it with me all the way to the worst, most depressing place in hell on earth, also known as puberty. Although there was more to my identity than being a high achieving student, as I was also involved in theatre, music and even sports, I kept living the lie about me being doomed to be the boring person in class, who would never even come close to the hierarchy’s highest level of coolness.
Although I did have friends, the lie about my character’s below zero level of fun led me to measure my self-worth in the amount of people I managed to hang out with. Especially between the ages of 13 and 16, there seemed to be this unspoken competition of “Who has got the most friends?” and the first epidemic of FOMO started to develop. Although I caught this common disease just like everyone else and I tried to cure it just like everyone else did by spending time with people and documenting it as evidence on social media, the most ridiculous and contradictory part of it was that I didn’t even enjoy hanging out with most of them. We didn’t share any interests, because, if I’m honest, most of them were too concerned about climbing up the ladder of popularity to even think about what might make their lives interesting, just as soon as they’d run out of films to watch and different ways to pose in their regularly updated Facebook profiles.
It wasn’t until the age of 16 that I started this new strategy, which I’d prefer to call “not giving a shit”. I can’t exactly remember what sparked the idea behind this revolutionary method, but there was at least one significant contributor that led me to my discovery. I remember that by working with a solidarity organisation led by students, I discovered the coolness behind being so knowledgeable, you can change the world just a tiny little bit by understanding and helping solve a problem that affects people, who are powerless to change their situation themselves (we were basically part time heroes). Another truth I discovered was that although we were a diverse mix of people, who would probably be defined as nerds due to our curiosity, engagement and love for knowledge, we were actually quite a fun bunch. Enjoying to spend time with people wasn’t exclusive to the cool kids after all.
Suddenly, my intellect and work ethic became tools to help improve the world, my bossiness was redefined as leadership skills and my interests in philosophy, music and literature became not only great foundations for conversations, but also the key developers of my future persona. Even my confidence started to grow faster than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bicep on steroids, and I started experimenting with clothes and even widened my musical horizon. I finally had the courage to wear my black bowler hat to school instead of letting it rot in the deepest and darkest corner of my wardrobe and insecurity, and it was also perfectly acceptable to create a playlist with songs that didn’t include names such as Katy Perry and Bruno Mars (which doesn’t mean I’ve stopped screaming the lyrics of Lazy Song while banging my head in sync with Mars’ monkeys in the music video).
If I could travel back in time and meet my seven year old self, I’d probably give her an excessive amount of books, sheet music and an Oscar-worthy pep talk about how she should embrace her interests and talents, because those are exactly the things that will give her the confidence to be her cool ass self, regardless of what others might think of her. I’d preach about the importance of realising that although some might give her a hard time by accusing her of being bossy and nerdy, she will get to a point in her life where she finds the courage to be what she once thought was a contradictory impossibility: to be nerdy and cool at the exact same time.
