when i was thirteen and nerdy

Be brave.
Stop trying to work smart and just work hard.
Most importantly, remember that no one else knows what they’re doing either. Seriously. Including the adults.

It’s ok if you don’t make friends with everybody who shares your interests, when you do meet some more.

Some of the people who seem like they’re stuck up because they don’t talk to anybody except the people they’re friends with already might be just as shy as you are.

The internet is a marvelous tool and I wish it had existed when I was 13; it saved my sanity and probably my life when I was 16 or 17. There are a lot of really interesting people on it who take pride in being kind of weird. Making friends over the internet is sometimes hard and scary, but it seems to increase the chances that you’ll find a whole bunch of people who think the way you do and like the same things.

There are other people out there like you, but you need to go out and find them. Don’t judge people too quickly, or by who their friends are. Different does not mean better. Other people will forget your screw ups far faster than you do - let the embarrasing moments go. Try new things and talk to new people - even if it doesn’t work out well it will rarely do you any harm. You are not better than them, they are not better than you. Popularity isn’t everything. There’s nothing wrong with being nice/friendly to people.

Listen.

Dear Thirteen and Nerdy,

Greetings from a fellow nerd!  These days I’m a 23-year-old Latin teacher (which, believe me, is more nerdery in a week than most people get in their entire lives), but I remember being where it sounds like you are.  In seventh grade I didn’t really have any friends.  There were a couple of guys I liked to play video games with and a girl my mother made me hang out with because she thought we’d make a cute couple.  I spent most of my time playing video games, reading thousand-page fantasy novels, and being convinced that I was smarter than my history teacher.  I knew I wanted to be a teacher, and I resented my parents and anyone else who asked me why, if I was so smart, I didn’t want to be a doctor or a lawyer.  Everyone around me who wasn’t openly hostile to me seemed to tolerate me with the slightly amused condescension generally reserved for the monkeys at the zoo.  For my part, I just hid in my books, making a point of not caring that no one wanted to spend time with me and trying my hardest to ignore the kids who stole my glasses on the bus.  Now, I don’t know what life looks like for you at this point, but I’m guessing that, at least concerning the major points, it’s not too far different from my experience.

This would be a good place to point out that I love to talk, and it only gets worse when I write, so this might get a little long-winded.

My qualifications aside, let me preface this by saying that there is literally nothing I can tell you that will make being thirteen and nerdy not suck.  You’re just reaching an age at which everybody you know thinks the most important thing in the world is being cool and being different is the gravest of sins.  You and I both know that they don’t have the whole picture, but that doesn’t make it hurt less when your classmates call you weird for watching Doctor Who instead of whatever juvenile Disney-Channel show is popular this year or for reading in bed on Saturday nights instead of hanging out with friends.  As much as I hate to say it, that’s going to be your life for the next few years, and the best advice I have to offer you in that area is that you should embrace your weirdness and take pride in it.

Here’s the most important thing, though: you’re not alone.  You’re not the only person in your school whom the others are calling “weird” and “different.”  You may not realize they’re there because they’re shy like you and/or desperately trying to fit in, but I promise you that there are other people who feel exactly the way you do.  And there are more of them than you think there are.  The best way to find these people is to join a club or organization at your school.  I’m guessing that you’ve got some pretty unique talents and interests.  Find a club that suits your interests and join up, and chances are good that you’ll find people with whom you have more in common than the focus of the club.  Those people will become a second family to you, a lifeline for when you feel like everyone else has abandoned you.

I know people who’ve found that kind of community in art club, math club, the debate team, the band, and even the swimming team.  For me it was the drama club (as it turns out, I’m a passably good actor, though I joined because I wanted to stay behind the scenes and run the spotlights).  Before the drama club, I had never had any friends with whom I had much in common.  When I joined drama, though, I found people who preferred reading to watching TV, who unashamedly enjoyed learning, who wore mismatched socks just because they couldn’t decide which design they felt like wearing that day.  Most importantly, everybody I found in that club was “”uncool”“—and, because we were all weird and different, we found in each other the courage to reject the notion that being weird and different was a bad thing.  And we looked forward to every club meeting because we knew it would be a chance for us to celebrate our weirdness together.  You can find a community like that.  You just have to be brave enough to look for it.

That said, you don’t want to attach yourself to anyone who comes seeking your friendship.  Bless you if you’re not cynical enough yet to believe this, but there are a ton of people in the world who will want to take advantage of your intelligence.  Make friends with the people who want you, not necessarily the ones who need you, and you’ll be okay.

There are a million other things I could tell you, but I’m getting too verbose already, and I don’t want to overwhelm you.  Let me leave you with one final reassurance: there is absolutely nothing wrong with you.  The fact that you are willing to be different from everyone around you means that you’ve grasped a fundamental truth that they haven’t: we are all different.  There’s a lot of pressure on you, and there always will be, to conform to the norms of the community.  Well, norms are made to be broken, I say.  Read your fantasy novels or your manga.  Teach yourself the Greek alphabet—or, better yet, Quenya or Khuzdul—and write notes to yourself in it.  Lock yourself in your room for a couple of hours because your Muse paid you a visit and you have to draw something.  And by all means, sing, even if you’re bad at it; it pays to let people know from a distance how strange you are, and if you’re lucky you might just brighten somebody’s day.

The Roman philosopher Seneca made a habit of closing his letters to his friend Lucilius with a quotation which had particularly struck him that day.  In that spirit, let me leave you with a dictum of Cicero’s which I’ve been thinking about recently: “What a man has, he ought to use; and whatever he does, he should do with all his might.”  If you’re calling yourself nerdy, you’ve probably been blessed with some pretty extraordinary talents.  Don’t let them go to waste, even if they make you stand out.  And whatever you choose to do with yourself, don’t hold back; no one ever changed the world by giving it less than his all.

Seek out other people who are willing to be different.  Never be afraid to be true to yourself.  Hang tough.  And remember that all of us nerds who’ve made it to adulthood have been where you are—and every single one of us is rooting for you.  Fortuna tibi faveat!

1. There is no right thing to say. When you don’t know what to say, chances are no one else does either. When people say the wrong thing, the thing that makes your heart clench up and your eyes burn with tears, just remember that they’re clueless. Find someone you can text the stupid things they say to — your cousin, maybe? I did this with my cousin last night and it was pretty cathartic — because the more times you say “You would not believe what this person said to me,” the funnier what they said gets.
2. You will change. And that’s amazing. Or maybe you won’t, and that’s just as amazing. When I was thirteen, I wanted to be everything except a historian and I wanted to live in a huge city in North America. Right now, I’m in graduate school in a small town in England studying … yep, history. Life is an adventure. Roll with it.
3. This is one I’m still trying to figure out, but my supervisor assures me that it’s true: sure, the odds may not be great, but if you don’t try, you can’t get it. Without trying, you’re not going to get anywhere. And if you try, who knows what could happen? I applied to Oxford on a whim and now, here I am, getting ready to reapply for my doctorate.
4. Don’t ever lose your sense of injustice. Don’t roll with it when it comes to this. When people are awful to you or to others, focus on how much that sucks, because that’s how you’re going to change the world. Don’t let the past control you, but don’t “get over it” either.”