Proud geeks - please share!

In My Humble Opinion
1

Right, here’s the deal. I’m writing a paper on ”geekdom, learning, and the preservation of adult curiosity” Being a full-blown nerd myself, I have a few ideas – but I could use some input from others. And who could be better than you Dopers, the most information-hungry group on the internet? I’d relly appreciate if you could answer a few questions, or just share your opinions or experiences.

Questions:

1: Do you consider yourself a geek?
2: What are your areas of interest/expertise? Are they the same you had as a kid?
3: Do you actively seek out information on your favorite subjects?
3 ½: and where? Library? Internet?
4: What was school like? Did you struggle, work hard and succeed, or get by without making an effort?
5: In your experience, do people understand why you spend time learning about things that aren’t directly relevant to work or everyday life?

2

1: Do you consider yourself a geek?
Not really. ETA: I have nothing against geeks, I just don’t consider myself one.

2: What are your areas of interest/expertise? Are they the same you had as a kid?
Global problems, current political trends, current trends (interests, not expertise). No, I’ve developed more of an interest in what is going on in the world once it started affecting me more.

3: Do you actively seek out information on your favorite subjects?
Yes.

3 ½: and where? Library? Internet?
Both.

4: What was school like? Did you struggle, work hard and succeed, or get by without making an effort?
I worked medium hard, and did quite well. I also had friends and was never bullied (important questions to ask geeks about their school experience).

5: In your experience, do people understand why you spend time learning about things that aren’t directly relevant to work or everyday life?
I’ve never considered it; I have no idea what they understand. I learn more things because I’m interested in them.

3

1 sorta
2 computers and gaming
3 net
4 hated high school college was better
5 don’t really care

4

1: Do you consider yourself a geek?

About some things, yes.

2: What are your areas of interest/expertise?

Hydrology & hydraulics; riverine flooding; dam breach; sediment transport; pipe hydraulics; hydrographs.

Are they the same you had as a kid?

No. As a kid I liked to play in the dirt and pretend I was a horse. :stuck_out_tongue:

3: Do you actively seek out information on your favorite subjects?
3 ½: and where? Library? Internet?

Yes, internet mostly nowadays.

4: What was school like? Did you struggle, work hard and succeed, or get by without making an effort?

Was a “C” student by getting by.

5: In your experience, do people understand why you spend time learning about things that aren’t directly relevant to work or everyday life?

They are directly relevant to my work. And I don’t interact with many people who aren’t a) my immediate family b)others in my line of work or c)clients. So everyone understands.

5

1: Do you consider yourself a geek?
Yes

2: What are your areas of interest/expertise? Are they the same you had as a kid?
General science and interesting facts (Hey, guess what I just heard about moles in Argentina…), and pretty much the same as a kid.

3: Do you actively seek out information on your favorite subjects?
Yes
3 ½: and where? Library? Internet?
Internet if I’m following up on something. Radio, TV and magazines for lots of info on things I’d never thought about.

4: What was school like? Did you struggle, work hard and succeed, or get by without making an effort?
High school - got by without much of an effort
college - worked hard

5: In your experience, do people understand why you spend time learning about things that aren’t directly relevant to work or everyday life?

Lots of people don’t get it. I get a lot of “Why the heck do you know that?” comments, and references to Trivia Pursuit and college quiz bowl.
My friends tend to be similar to me, although different people follow different things.

6

1: Do you consider yourself a geek?
Yes.
2: What are your areas of interest/expertise? Are they the same you had as a kid?
Medicine/human biology. Psychology. Literature. Quotations. Words. Mythology. General interesting facts. Pretty much the same as when I was a kid, though I didn’t get into psychology and quotations until my early teens.
3: Do you actively seek out information on your favorite subjects?
Yes.
3 ½: and where? Library? Internet?
Both, but most of my information comes from books I buy. I frequent second hand book stores and book sales, and buy anything I see that looks interesting.
4: What was school like? Did you struggle, work hard and succeed, or get by without making an effort?
I coasted until the last two years of high school, whereupon I started having to make an effort to get good grades.
5: In your experience, do people understand why you spend time learning about things that aren’t directly relevant to work or everyday life?
About half my friends are geeks too. They totally get it. It doesn’t really come up with the other half very often, though I do get the occasional “How the hell did you know that?” at quiz nights and things. My family is used to me, and just roll their eyes when I bring home another dictionary or medical textbook.

7

1: Do you consider yourself a geek?

I have geeky interests, but I am not as obsessive or narrowly specific as true geeks.

2: What are your areas of interest/expertise? Are they the same you had as a kid?

Movie making, visual effects, fantasy. Most of them manifested in my late teens and early adult hood.

3: Do you actively seek out information on your favorite subjects?

Yes, occasionally.

3 ½: and where? Library? Internet?

Books and the internet, and friends.

4: What was school like? Did you struggle, work hard and succeed, or get by without making an effort?

I didn’t put much effort in, and got by pretty well. Then things got academically tougher and my lack of effort bit me in the arse.

5: In your experience, do people understand why you spend time learning about things that aren’t directly relevant to work or everyday life?

The geek shall inherit the earth. People understand way more now than they did when I was a kid in the 80s. It seems that they recognise their own interests in sport or cars are just being geeky in another form.

8

Thanks, guys! Awright, a few followups (followsup?):

Do you consider yourself a reader?

When you think “reading”, do you think of:

  • exclusively books
  • any piece of text
  • any text based media (including audio books)
  • fiction only, regardless of medium

For non-fiction readers: Did your teachers/parents/librarian/others encourage you to read more fiction?

And one for those who frequent libraries: Does your library promote nonfiction reading (booktalks, displays, etc)?

9

1: Do you consider yourself a geek?
Yes

2: What are your areas of interest/expertise? Are they the same you had as a kid?
Computers, computer games, currently Warcraft

3: Do you actively seek out information on your favorite subjects?
Yes, to me that’s part of being a geek, the desire to know and understand as much about something as possible.

3 ½: and where? Library? Internet?
Internet.

4: What was school like? Did you struggle, work hard and succeed, or get by without making an effort?
School was easy. I was intelligent and could recall information easily. University was hard, because I was required to apply the information rather than just regurgitate it, and I wasn’t prepared for that.

5: In your experience, do people understand why you spend time learning about things that aren’t directly relevant to work or everyday life?
No. To be honest, I keep a lot of my interests to myself. I hear people make stereotypical comments about gamers, etc, and I don’t let on that I’m one of them. I think a lot of my workmates and even some of my friends would be surprised to know the ‘real me’

Hope that’s helpful!

10

Do you consider yourself a reader?
Yes

When you think “reading”, do you think of:
Any text based media (including audio books)

For non-fiction readers: Did your teachers/parents/librarian/others encourage you to read more fiction?
They encouraged me to read a range of books. I remember as a child being praised by the librarian for having such a range of books and I remember feeling really pleased about that. :slight_smile: My parents were just happy that I shared their passion for reading, they weren’t too bothered about what it was I was actually reading.

And one for those who frequent libraries: Does your library promote nonfiction reading (booktalks, displays, etc)?
I don’t frequent libraries.

11

1: Do you consider yourself a geek?

Yes, although I tend to chafe at any such labels or definitions.
2: What are your areas of interest/expertise? Are they the same you had as a kid?

Science, math, and computers are the long-term ones. Physics, too, except that the common-sense grasp that helped me breeze through Newtonian Physics kind of hit a wall when I got to electricity, magnetism, and quantum mechanics. Mostly it depends on where I am at any given moment. If I’m on a ship, I’m learning everything I can about sailing.

Same as a kid? Well, I always tested a grade or two (or three) ahead of where I was in math. Had my first exposure to computers in eighth grade using a paper teletype machine dialed up to the school-district mainframe. And in college, I discovered that one of my best friends had the same toy I’d had as a kid. I don’t know which was cause and which was effect, but the roots go back to before I was 10.
3: Do you actively seek out information on your favorite subjects?
3 ½: and where? Library? Internet?

Yes. Some reading, some surfing, lots of real-world stuff. I’ve travelled to some places, and done some things just to see what they were like. I started learning to play guitar about a year ago. After my last trip to the dentist, I decided to floss and brush twice every day until my next checkup to see if they notice the difference. (My gums seem kinda dark red now, is that bad?)
4: What was school like? Did you struggle, work hard and succeed, or get by without making an effort?

I pretty much coasted and got a bit above a ‘B’ average.
5: In your experience, do people understand why you spend time learning about things that aren’t directly relevant to work or everyday life?

The people I spend time with do, because those are the type of people I tend to know.

Are there really people who don’t understand that? I mean, everybody’s interested in something, right?

12

Questions:

1: Do you consider yourself a geek?
Yeah, in a general sense.

2: What are your areas of interest/expertise? Are they the same you had as a kid?
Education and technology are pretty much my daily life as far as career and personal. Personally, I am into a lot of things geeky and non-geeky. I am a huge tech guy, and love the side jobs I get designing websites and working on code for this and that, but I also spend a lot of time working out and playing music. As a kid, I immersed myself in computers and technology and now am reaping the benefits (professionally) of being well rounded educational wise but knowing a lot about some real specific things I learned at a younger age. I also was into most of the same things as a kid, but slightly different. Then, I loved mountain biking and working on my car, now I ride a nice road bike and work on my house. I supposed if I had an old MGB to work on, but that is a different story.

3: Do you actively seek out information on your favorite subjects?
Absolutely

3 ½: and where? Library? Internet?
All over the place. Public library, school libraries, internet, fellow geeks.

4: What was school like? Did you struggle, work hard and succeed, or get by without making an effort?
This is an odd one, because I was a geek, but rather athletic as well. I spent a lot of time playing basketball during the day (when I had study hall, lunch, or a class I could skip) but when I was in class I took a heavy computer/business load and did relatively well. I was never concerned with high school though, because I was convinced that it didn’t matter after I enrolled in college anyways, so I worked just enough to get by. In college, I screwed up big at first, but once I went back, I was pretty much a hard worker due to situation. I usually had 20-22 hours a quarter and finished up early, but because my wife and I were hurting for money and I knew I needed to get done and get a job, so I couldn’t screw around in college.

5: In your experience, do people understand why you spend time learning about things that aren’t directly relevant to work or everyday life?
Luckily, in my work environment, they are pretty supportive and seem to understand outside learning. Being an employee of a pretty forward thinking non-profit that works with underprivileged youth, we spend a lot of time working on the idea of learning as a life-long process. I also am lucky enough to have a family that holds this same attitude, so it seems like people usually understand this. I actually have a harder time making my parents understand that I spend my time on weekends on 20-30 mile bike rides than my afternoons at the library and reading through notes about web design and playing with my Linux junk…

Brendon Small

13

Sorry, didn’t see these ones at first.

Do you consider yourself a reader?
Absolutely.

When you think “reading”, do you think of:

  • any text based media (including audio books)
    In addition to this, I work with students in multiple classes from multiple schools, as a coordinator, and recently I had two girls failing English. The best suggestion I received about helping them get through the two novels for the class was to get them from somewhere like Audible and let them have copies of the audiobooks. Both girls passed the course and were extremely glad that they could listen to the story instead of stare at the book and imagine it that way. I think that there are so many applications for this that I wish people would promote it more in traditional education. I know for fall that I already have two or three students that will be in my classroom that are auditory learners, and most of our students do way better with hands-on learning than traditional methods.
    For non-fiction readers: Did your teachers/parents/librarian/others encourage you to read more fiction?
    Not particularly, but I think it was because I enjoyed a healthy mix.

And one for those who frequent libraries: Does your library promote nonfiction reading (booktalks, displays, etc)?
I think they promote a reasonable amount of nonfiction and fiction at this time, but I know that they could do more (not putting them down, just some of the things they do are sort of dated) but they have a newer director that is working on changing the direction they are heading.

Brendon Small

14

1: Do you consider yourself a geek?

I guess so. I was a late bloomer. Grew up as a jock.

2: What are your areas of interest/expertise? Are they the same you had as a kid?

Professionally, I solve problems. This often leverages off of things I learned in the past.
Not one for stories, I read encyclopedias as a kid.
3: Do you actively seek out information on your favorite subjects?
3 ½: and where? Library? Internet?

Actively? Yes.
Internet first. Library if I want more detailed information. I don’t understand why science and philosophy journals won’t offer internet content for free when I can just go to the library and look at it. Save me the trip please.

4: What was school like? Did you struggle, work hard and succeed, or get by without making an effort?

My parents believed that all kids are equal so my brother, sisters, and myself all had the goal of exempting exams, meaning a c+ in each course. I got this with no effort at all.
I can remember putting my name on a test and handing it in because 1) I didn’t need the marks and 2) there was floor hockey in the gymnasium.
5: In your experience, do people understand why you spend time learning about things that aren’t directly relevant to work or everyday life?

No. Sometimes I’ll reference something that people have no idea about or where it came from. Their faces look funny :slight_smile:
Or I’ll get into conversations with subject matter experts, only to have them ask how I know so much about said subject.

15

1: Do you consider yourself a geek?
Not really, although I love thinkgeek.c*m. I generally think of myself as an intellectual. I’m not good enough at math or computers to be a nerd.

2: What are your areas of interest/expertise? Are they the same you had as a kid?
I’ve always liked some type of current music. I’ve always played keyboards and have never reaaly stopped writing songs, although I compose less now that I play in a cover band. Similarly, I used to write for pleasure until I did it professionally. i used to be more interested in D&D, sci-fi and fantasy than I am now. In the past 10 years my interest in history and popular science topics has increased. My religious and political views haven’t changed much since my late teens.
3: Do you actively seek out information on your favorite subjects?
yes
3 ½: and where? Library? Internet?
Library, bookstore, Internet

4: What was school like? Did you struggle, work hard and succeed, or get by without making an effort?
Got by without much effort

5: In your experience, do people understand why you spend time learning about things that aren’t directly relevant to work or everyday life?
Generally no - although my family members are also curious and knowledgeable about a lot of things, so they get it.

16

1: Do you consider yourself a geek?

Uh, see my user name.

2: What are your areas of interest/expertise? Are they the same you had as a kid?

Writing, electronics, computer programming, playing music, drawing, anything mechanical, shooting guns (especially black powder rifles), history, and just learning anything new.

My interests are mostly the same as when I was a kid, except I hated history in school. Once I stopped having to memorize names and dates history actually became interesting. Black powder rifles is a relatively new interest, but I shot BB guns as a kid and real guns as a teenager.

I had more of an interest in taking things like cars apart when I was younger. I seem to be growing out of that one a bit as I get older.

3: Do you actively seek out information on your favorite subjects?
3 ½: and where? Library? Internet?

Library, internet, just talking to people, watching a show on the subject on TV, really anywhere where I can find info. Sometimes I learn something by just saying “hey, what happens if I do this?” and seeing where that takes me.

4: What was school like? Did you struggle, work hard and succeed, or get by without making an effort?

I mostly got by with little effort. I put effort into things that interested me, not so much effort into things that didn’t. I aced the hardest classes that other students struggled with, and often did poorly in easier classes because they bored me.

5: In your experience, do people understand why you spend time learning about things that aren’t directly relevant to work or everyday life?

Mostly, yes.

Do you consider yourself a reader?

Yep.

**When you think “reading”, do you think of:

  • exclusively books
  • any piece of text
  • any text based media (including audio books)
  • fiction only, regardless of medium**

Any piece of text.

For non-fiction readers: Did your teachers/parents/librarian/others encourage you to read more fiction?

No. I always read a mix of fiction and non-fiction. When I was a kid I read pretty much every book in the science fiction section of our library. I also used to just browse through encyclopedias.

And one for those who frequent libraries: Does your library promote nonfiction reading (booktalks, displays, etc)?

Not specifically. They promote reading in general, and have featured and new sections for both fiction and non-fiction.

17

Do you consider yourself a reader?
yes

When you think “reading”, do you think of:

  • any piece of text
    Even if you told me that an audio book contained every single word that was in the printed book, it just wouldn’t seem the same to me. Reading isn’t just translating the little black marks on the page. It’s creating a little world in my head, complete with character “sounds” and being able to go back and reread a line if I want/need to. This is less true of non-fiction books. I’d feel less like I was missing something, if it was say an article on the newest discovery in astronomy.

For non-fiction readers: Did your teachers/parents/librarian/others encourage you to read more fiction? N/A

And one for those who frequent libraries: Does your library promote nonfiction reading (booktalks, displays, etc)? No. There are very few non-fiction books in the displays in the front of the library.

18

Of community interest for anyone who answered question #1 “yes” and who lives in or near Charlotte: www.charlottegeeks.com

19

1: Do you consider yourself a geek?
I prefer the term “nerd”, but for the purposes of this poll, let’s call that a “yes”.

2: What are your areas of interest/expertise? Are they the same you had as a kid?
Science and math in general, but especially physics. I’ve been telling people I wanted to be a physicist since I was about four years old.

3: Do you actively seek out information on your favorite subjects?
Yes, absolutely.

3 ½: and where? Library? Internet?
Mostly through school (currently a grad student), but also through scientific papers (available through the Internet, but should perhaps be considered a separate category) and original research.

4: What was school like? Did you struggle, work hard and succeed, or get by without making an effort?
Very little effort up until grad school, which in fact left me somewhat unprepared for when it did start requiring effort.

**5: In your experience, do people understand why you spend time learning about things that aren’t directly relevant to work or everyday life? **
Difficult to answer this, since most of the people I associate with are also physicists.

20

1: Do you consider yourself a geek?

Yup

2: What are your areas of interest/expertise? Are they the same you had as a kid?

Science, Trek, comics, science fiction then, now those plus math.

3: Do you actively seek out information on your favorite subjects?

Yup

3 ½: and where? Library? Internet?

Net

4: What was school like? Did you struggle, work hard and succeed, or get by without making an effort?

Didn’t struggle, slid.

5: In your experience, do people understand why you spend time learning about things that aren’t directly relevant to work or everyday life?

Nope.

Read all the time, still do. Mostly real books.