A Former Geek Offers Hope
Why It's Good To Be A High School Loser
So it took me a while to realize why I had such a visceral reaction to these pieces, a feeling exquisitely mixed between "kill, kill" and "bullshit." It's because of course these kids are going to be all right--they do have family that care, good schools, opportunities for making friends, and social skills. Face it, you may not be popular, but if you have social skills your weirdness becomes just a cute quirk in adulthood.
If you don't have interpersonal skills, a sense of appropriate behavior for the occasion, the ability to work with others and get along in a group--you have fewer options because you make people uncomfortable. I had to try to explain to Aces a few weeks ago what a geek was, and I mistakenly glossed over that aspect of the culture.
Another source of my crankiness is that I didn't even have a social group in high school. We had no debate team, my father objected to night rehearsals so I quit drama club (where I also faced up to the fact that I wasn't going to get a decent role anyway) and spent my junior year at afterschool gym and my free period trying not to fail trigonometry. I hate prep schools.
2 comments:
I feel like I came out of high school with very poor social skills and that hurt a lot in early college, but over time I modeled myself after other people and learned those skills, and it got better. It is not all that difficult if you are not resistant to change and do not maintain the thinking that everyone is out to get you. At least in my experience!
I did too, and did the same. I also think having a professional job after college helped a lot. But if I had to go back (and this relates to another post later today) I would be more judgemental. I think I erred on the side of being too open minded about things. I could not recognize red flags.
And true ability to network, get on with others and such is incredibly important in the workplace.
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