March 2012
1 post
January 2012
2 posts
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“There is nothing wrong with loving the crap out of everything. Negative people...”
– Ryan Adams (via seventyfourspecies)
December 2011
26 posts
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Remember that no one else knows what they're doing...
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.
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It's ok if you don't make friends with everybody...
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...
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Five Geek Social Fallacies →
Within the constellation of allied hobbies and subcultures collectively known as geekdom, one finds many social groups bent under a crushing burden of dysfunction, social drama, and general interpersonal wack-ness. It is my opinion that many of these never-ending crises are sparked off by an assortment of pernicious social fallacies — ideas about human interaction which spur their holders to...
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Different does not mean better.
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...
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“What a man has, he ought to use; and whatever he...
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...
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If you don't try, you can't get it.
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...
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What I figured out, slowly but surely, was that...
I’m sure you’re being told it will get better by a lot of people - and it does, and it will, and there will come a time when you can be completely, 100% yourself and people will adore you for it. Unfortunately, there’s a chance that high school is not that time. When I was your age, I used to sit on my own during breaks and read. It was what I liked doing. I was diagnosed with...
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They all think they're weird, and they're all just...
When I was thirteen and nerdy and feeling kind of like I was the ugly duckling of the world I wish someone had pointed out that everyone else felt like that too! You know all those girls who are perfectly dressed and who the boys seem to love? And all those boys who have tons of friends and seem really really cool? They all feel the same way you do. They all think they’re weird, and...
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Let music lead you to new places, and to ask new...
When I was 13, the hate directed at “emo” music was in full-swing. It didn’t matter that Fallout Boy was very clearly post-hardcore and not emo in the same vein as Texas is the Reason was, because if the lyrics were “whiny”, high-pitched, emotive, etc. it was emo. I didn’t listen to groups like My Chemical Romance or Fallout Boy publically because they were too...
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Start arguments and pick fights and learn to take...
THE INTERNET, IT EXISTS no, seriously, this is important. the internet is a fantastic thing and you should take advantage of it - sometimes you get lucky and meet great people in real life that you can share your thoughts and experiences with and come up with stuff and create and that’s great! but sometimes you don’t. or sometimes you look for years, and there they are, or - sometimes...
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If it turns out your friends aren't working...
You’ll find your people someday. You are not alone. Practical advice? Try talking to the other weird kids. My first day of high school, I decided to talk to one new person in every class. I was too scared to talk to the uber-confident cool kids, so I usually ended up talking to the quiet nerdy folks in every class. They were my friends all through high school. People are like bunnies-...
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You're not that different from other kids.
Not all kids are like those bozos. I hear that you’re shy, and man, I understand it. Other people seem scary as anything when you know that some of them are jerks. It can make you start thinking that ALL other kids are jerks, because they’re all the same. That’s a big lie those bullies are telling you. Don’t be fooled into thinking that everybody thinks the same except...
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Social behaviour can be learned.
What I needed to hear when I was thirteen was that socialising is hard and that social behaviour can be learned. What moved me from eternally friendless and miserable to a fairly socially competent and extroverted (and much, much happier) person was changing myself until I read to other people as ‘normal’, not waiting for the world to recognise my wonderfulness. (And I am pretty...
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“The best advice about anything I ever received came from a scruffy looking...”
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You can't get away with hating everyone.
You can’t get away with hating everyone. Resist that urge. That’s something that’s plagued me, even until now as an adult. For people, it’s more than just a desire to just be accepted for who we are - we also need to feel wanted. When I started believing that I wasn’t accepted or wanted by my peers, that quickly grew into bitterness. I’m not sure I have any...
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“The kids most likely to hurt you are also the most likely to have shitty lives...”
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This is something that nobody can ever take away...
Your nerdiness might seem like a hindrance now, but it will open up great intellectual vistas for you as you grow older. And, more importantly, it will imbue everything both great and small with an endless wonder. This is something that nobody can ever take away from you.
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"Shyness is nice. but shyness can stop you from...
Something that might hopefully be clearer to kids today than it was in the early 80s, thanks to the internet: people are WEIRD. All people. Even/especially the “normal” ones. Some folks bottle their own private weirdness up inside, others let it out and deal with it. The folks who deal with it early on have a leg up, because you only live once and it’s no fun to spend your whole...
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“Rock it and own it like you mean it. They won’t bother you if you’re...”
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DD.tumblr: On being a geek girl →
dduane:
The posting that brought up the question is here. My response is in the comments there. But for the record:
Being a geek girl means building every computer in the house (except the laptops). It means always knowing when (for Android!) “there’s an app for that”. Being a geek girl means teasing…
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Labor to keep alive in your breast that little...
I wish someone had told me about emotional intelligence. And given how confusing adult life is to a 13 year old (or at least this emotionally unintelligent one) TJ’s Rules of Civility might have been a good starting point. (Please forgive the gender-ification. It was written by a boy.) The Rules Of Civility And Decent Behavior In Company And Conversation
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You are amazingly complex. More than you can...
Popularity is meaningless, and shyness is not a bad thing! Introverted is just another way to be. Different is awesome, and your people are out there. You won’t find people who are the same as you, but you will find people who want you around at least as much as you want them around. Never listen to anybody if they tell you what you should be or do. “”Should”” does...
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Twenty years from now, your ability to have an...
I was bullied up to about tenth grade. I moved around a lot, which didn’t help, and I embraced it as part of my identity for some of the time, which is a thing some kids do. When I was in fifth grade, I told a kid ahead of me in some narrow stairway, “could you please move your prodigious bulk out of my way.” And he did. I’m not sure why I said it, but I’m still...
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Don't wait until college, find other nerds now!
You’re not alone. Don’t wait until college, find other nerds now! They can be a little difficult to find, they (like you, probably) had to quickly become experts at camouflage. You might have to look for them in the library, in nerdy afterschool activities, in the bathroom eating their lunch… But don’t turn their back on them cause everybody else does, band together, bond...
November 2011
122 posts
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The people whose lives peak at 13 are the saddest...
There was a thing that I actually got from a book I read that I found a great comfort to me at 13, which has actually turned out to be really, really, really true as I’ve aged: The people whose lives peak at 13 are the saddest people of all. Hell, the people whose lives peak in high school are to be pitied as well. If your life is so great at 13, you don’t learn how to be a person, and...
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“Roll with it, be proud. Have fun, openly, and never, ever hide who you are. If...”
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Trust me, you're not the weak one.
When I was in junior high, I was consistently made fun of because I didn’t wear brand clothing, my family was dysfunctional in a very public way, and I wasn’t exactly the female ideal. (Instead of slim, I was scrawny. No make up. Puffy haired. And those curves other girls flaunted never quite showed up for me.) Kids tried to tease me by calling me a lesbian, and when I didn’t...
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“Occasionally, hitting people is actually rather a good idea.”
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Small things go a long way.
Find the people who are also a little bit different and stick with them. Company always makes things slightly easier to deal with.
Try to tread the line between appropriate behavior and slight disrespect for the teachers carefully - I was top of the class, but by occasional moments of rebellion (cracking jokes about them outside of class, going along with any insurrection others might create,...
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If you don't know who you are and what you love,...
I remember being just one of the kids in lower school. There were no cliques to speak of and everyone was just normal. And then came middle school and for whatever reason I became very quiet and isolated. There were times that felt so emotional then, and I stumbled around a lot socially. No real sense of identity yet. If you don’t know who you are and what you love, it can definitely be hard...
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Love the dork in yourself.
Think about somebody you really love. Like REALLY love: a good friend or a crush or a sibling or your parents, or even a pet. Now think about the dorkiest thing you know about that person: their ridiculous cowlick problem, or the way they can have whole conversations in their sleep, or their weirdly encyclopedic knowledge of fictional starships. This is probably a thing these people are...
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Own your nerdiness.
Someone told me this last week and I wish they had told me it when I was 13 - own your nerdiness. It’s hard being different and sometimes you feel like you are alone and no one understands. And sometimes, in truly sucky situations, this is true. But even if no one else understands why you love kickarse space dramas, dressing the way you feel comfortable and not having something to say ALL...
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Unfortunately, these people don't disappear.
Unfortunately, these people don’t disappear. When you do get older and enter the work force, these people are still around. There is no blessed meteor that comes and wipes them away. But the rules of the game change, and you come out ahead and you can spend the rest of your life fucking over the kind of people that bother you now.
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"Be nice to everyone, especially the people who...
My brother was popular in school, but I wasn’t. I used to get picked on a lot. I asked him what to do once when I was in junior high, and he told me his secret. “Be nice to everyone, especially the people who don’t like you.” So I started doing that. I didn’t do anything extreme. I mean, I didn’t go out of my way or anything, but I’d say “good...
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By the time I was twelve, I knew there were so...
I’m still in high school, but thankfully in a rather safe group of students, who allow me to be nerdy to my heart’s content. I will say, however, that my saviour when I was bullied as a younger child was the internet. My parents (rather naively) gave me, essentially, free run of the internet from the time I was about ten. I was smart enough not to get into trouble, and found fannish...
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Nolite te bastardes carborundum: don't let the...
“Hello, Thirteen! I exclaim, but in perfect honesty, I disliked my tour of thirteen and hope you escape it soon. Thirteen was acne, and being the only person in the world who liked Star Trek and didn’t have a Jansport backpack. (At thirteen, “”world”” was synonymous with “”intermediate school”“. One gradually grows, and the other...
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You need a bigger pond, and the world is full of...
Hi, You don’t know me, but I wanted to let you know that I was once in your position. I was smart, I was nerdy, and I was into sci-fi and fantasy and all the things everybody in middle school generally thinks are beneath them. Two things helped me through it. It’s a broad, sweeping statement, but my mother always told me ‘You need a bigger pond, and the world is full of...
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They may not realize how much they are hurting...
She is not powerless. Of course, this will pass, and in the long term, she can learn a lot from it… But if it is more than she can bear, there are alternatives to regular school. There may be an alternative school near where she lives, or she can switch to home schooling, at least until high school. If she does this, she should make sure that her classmates know why. They may not realize how...
cayococoairport-deactivated2011 asked: I just stumbled across this blog by chance and am glad I did! There are some seriously great words of wisdom to be found here. Thanks for sharing!
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I wish someone had told me that I was actually a...
I wish someone had told me that I was actually a much cooler person than I thought I was, and that lots of people at 13 are not very mature and therefore have unsophisticated rules about who is cool and who is not. Even if I felt uncool and unconfident, if, some of the time, I at least acted like like I was confident in what a great person I really was, a few of the other 13, nerdy, and very cool...
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I wish someone told me that it was alright. I'm...
When I was 13 everyone I knew started their childhood dating and holding hands and other stuff like that, and I was having none of it. I wanted to play lego, I wanted to run around and play manhunt. I was focused on video games. I was bullied everyday for random stuff like my interests, and what people thought about my sexuality. Honestly, they called me all sorts of names just based on my voice,...
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You know how the Doctor says bow ties are cool...
Well, I don’t know about your cousin, but I know that when I was younger and nerdy and a little awkward about it (I wasn’t picked on so much as ignored, which can be just as damaging) I thought my problem wasn’t that I was different, but that my problem was that I wasn’t “cool.” And I wish someone had told me that being “cool” is subjective. You know...
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NEVER stop inventing.
Hi, cousin in Austin! Greetings from the internet. I was thirteen once. And in seventh grade. And it SUCKED. I was obsessed with stories about this band that I really liked, and lots of people on the internet wrote stories about them and I would read them and join in. It was awesome! The problem was, nobody else thought it was very awesome. And my parents were kind of down on me being on...
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Lots of girls like games.
Well, I wish someone had told me that lots of girls like games, lots of girls like other girls, and that it’s possible to meet girls who fit both categories (and, in fact, fairly easy at a nerdy campus, whether high school or college).
Also, the internet is an excellent way to socialize. Go to nerdy sites (LJ, Tumblr, etc) and geek out with other nerds. I didn’t have that option.
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“Hello.”
