Nerd, Geek, Dork

Greetings, fellow readers! Many of you have approached me with questions about the video I posted earlier this week: why did you make this video? How come you and your roommate have such good chemistry on screen? Where can I get Shakespeare socks like yours? Can I have your autograph?

Ok, that last one isn't true, but I will do my best to assuage your curiosity on the previous counts. As I have mentioned before, my roommate Allison is one of my best friends and a person I consider a member of my family. She and I were randomly assigned roommates in the Honors dorm at UF our freshman year, and we've been living together, thick as thieves ever since then (going on three years, woo hoo!)

The Shakespeare socks are from the internet (where else?) and of course, you may have my autograph, preferably on the frontispiece of my Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, release date TBD.

But Anna, I can hear you asking, what about the most important question, the one which holds the key to all the mysteries of life: why did you make this video in the first place? Patience, young padawans. You will learn when you are ready.

As I have mentioned before, I am taking a one credit (fun credit, really) class called Talk Nerdy to Me, and our first project was to make a vlog about when we became a nerd. Blessed with both beauty and talent, not to mention excellent chemistry, Allison and I decided to make this video together, little knowing what a hit it would be.

Fast forward a bit and you'll find me today in the midst of a conversation with my friend Sean about what it means to be a nerd, specifically as distinct from being a geek or a dork.

Like any word nerd worth her salt, I decided to begin by looking it up in the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines a nerd as "An insignificant or contemptible person, one who is conventional, affected, or studious; a 'square,' a 'swot.'" The first recorded incidence of the word "nerd" was in the 1950 picture book If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss, who wrote, "And then, just to show them, I'll sail to Ka-Troo And Bring Back an It-Kutch, a Preep and a Proo, a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker, too!"

Despite this delightful lilting lyric, I do not think of myself as either insignificant or contemptible, so I moved on to the word "geek," which predates "nerd" by at least fifty years, appearing for the first time in the late nineteenth century. Alas, the dictionary informed me that a geek is "an unfashionable or socially inept person." "Dork" didn't give me too much luck either--it is defined as "a dull, slow-witted, or socially inept person" and derives from an American slang term for "penis" in the 1960's.

With pejoratives on the brain, I at last hearkened to that great fount of internet knowledge, the webcomic xkcd, whose author constructed a very helpful Venn diagram for those of us who care about our stance on these issues:

You can guess which category of the three I fall into. Here's another, more serious, Venn from the folks over at Laughing Squid:

According to this system, my combination of intelligence and obsession makes me a geek rather than a nerd, which is the word I usually use to describe myself.

Knowing that self-diagnosis had failed me, I took my quest to the next level and found a test purporting to solve my identity crisis once and for all. I scored 91% nerd, 61% geek, and 39% dork, according to the test's definitions of the words, earning me the title of modern, cool nerd. (Spoiler alert: I have no idea what that means, since I don't think of myself as particularly modern or cool. The explanation below is merely my cut-and-paste attempt at sounding smart.)

"The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)! "

Great, I'll take it! My takeaway from all of this is less finding a particular word to describe myself than it is embracing an identity once thought of as an insult. I'm glad I live in a world where geek is chic and nerds can be modern and cool, or at least a world where I can be among fellow geeks and nerds. Remember, make fun of nerds at your own peril: you'll be working for us someday!

Last but not least, the all-important Venn of the Apocalypse:

I can't decide whether I'm pleased or concerned by the fact that my preferences place me squarely into the "death to humans" category. 

Until next time,

Anna

Talk Nerdy To Me

Happy Blogiversary!

Greetings, fellow readers! This January marks our Blogiversary--Shelf Life has been going strong for two years now! I think this is the longest I've ever stuck with a new year's resolution, and I could never have anticipated the publication this blog has grown into. To continue with this positive trend, I'd like to announce a new resolution for the blog. Many of you have given me positive feedback concerning the videos I posted last fall; therefore, I'd like to resolve to make at least one of my monthly posts a video chronicle. This will keep me growing and learning as a blogger and hopefully provide some entertainment and variety for all of you.

With that being said, let's turn our attention to another significant event of the past week: the start of the spring semester! This semester might just be my favorite class lineup ever. I'm taking:

Latin I, with a professor who just might be the 11th Doctor in disguise (for all you Doctor Who fans out there). In addition to conjugating verbs and making fun of the ridiculous pronunciation guide, I'm keeping a Tie of the Day dossier to document his manifold bow tie choices.

Women Writers and Classical Mythology. This is easily shaping up to be my favorite class of the semester. It's taught by two of my favorite professors, one from the English department and one from Classics. We're reading modern poetry in conjunction with ancient myths and studying the connection between the two, particularly as it concerns the role of women in art and society. In addition to that, the class is curating an exhibit at the Harn Museum of Art and creating our own interpretation of women, myth, and visual culture via Pinterest--stay tuned for more on that once the project's underway.

American Literature Seminar: Sexing the Past. Described by my prof as "graduate school lite," this class is essentially the same as the UF graduate class with the same name, only with about half the reading and writing load. My AmLit teacher from last semester is leading this class, which promises to be an interesting investigation of what we talk about when we talk about sex, and how we can understand and study sex and sexuality when our own understanding of the two is both similar and different to the way we understood sex in the past. This week, we read part of Foucault's History of Sexuality and an excerpt from William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation called "A Terrible Case of Bestiality" for an early American take on sexual deviance.

Talk Nerdy to Me. This is a one-credit class I'm taking for fun with my roommate Allison and Shakespeare buddy David. It's about nerds and nerd culture, and while we haven't gotten too far into it, I'm stoked for our next meeting, which is listed on the syllabus as "I came in like a Pokeball." How can that class possibly be boring?

My last class, The Grandeur that was Rome, doesn't meet until tomorrow, so I have nothing to say about it except that the reading list looks promising. My prof from Classics and Fantasy is teaching it, which means we're sure to have good discussion.

That's all for now, except to say that my A Song of Ice and Fire readthrough has progressed to A Storm of Swords--ah, how I sigh to think of the carnage to come!

Until next time,

Anna