I stumbled upon the following video this morning, in which a UK cider company mimics Apple with the release of its new cider. The giant nerd in me giggled uncontrollably at the Apple snub, and the cider glutton inside was like, WANT THIS NOW.
And since I imagine I can’t be the only nerdy cider glutton around… enjoy!
So I’m sitting here watching the men’s high bar finals in gymnastics, and the soles of my feet are SO. SWEATY.
Epke’s epic gold for the Netherlands. Hopefully his palms weren’t sweating! Mine were though, for the both of us.
I’ve written about the science of sweating before, with a theory as to why humans sweat so much more, than say, a dog does. Well, here’s another sweaty puzzler–why do our hands and feet sweat when we’re nervous? I definitely get clammy with any slightly scary stimulus, especially anything involving leaving the ground: looking down from a height, quarry jumping, climbing trees, etc. (Also apparently when watching people flip around on the high bar. Remember that post about misplaced empathy? Yeah.)
But there might be an evolutionary explanation for this! Maybe the reason why we sweat on our palms and feet when we’re nervous is because of the fight-or-flight response. Think about back in the day, when our ancestors got their adrenaline rushes escaping from predators. A bit of dampness on our extremities gives us a little more friction/grip action, and might make it easier to, you know, swing from tree to tree if being pursued. If that biological pathway stuck around, there you have it. I watch men in leotards miss falling from great heights by a fingertip and boom, my hands and feet start sweating profusely, just in case I might have to run for it later.
It’s a bit of a stretch, but I can’t deny that right now my hands and feet are feeling especially grippy. Also, now that gymnastics and swimming are over you won’t have to read another post about the Olympics from me! And then I can get to sleep at a normal hour!
As Denise already knows, I have recently taken a considerable liking to all things documentary. I mean, it’s always been there – but recently, my love for non-fiction has multiplied exponentially. This has resulted in hours upon hours of my life being devoted to obscure yet fascinating topics. Call me maybe crazy, but I think sometimes this is how I make up for not being in school anymore. I don’t have a strong desire to pursue another degree yet, but I still am fascinated by the exploration of new or different knowledge, and I like to think that I do more than just read Suri’s Burn Book highly intellectual material on a daily basis.
So what’s been on my playlist recently? I’m so glad you asked! Here, let me give you my unsolicited documentary reviews:
One week, my friend Steve asked what I had done the previous weekend. I told him that Denise and I spent Saturday night watching a movie about the home-birthing movement, including detailed footage of Ricki Lake giving birth. In her bathtub.
I thought he was going to vomit, but he was too busy picking his jaw up off the ground to do that.
And thus began the documentary journey (which Denise has accompanied me on for a good portion of the way). The Business of Being Born is actually a great example of why I have been enthralled with documentaries – sometimes they are a bit one-sided, a bit intense, a bit opinionated – but they often expose you to a completely new topic or way of thinking. For me, I had always assumed that giving birth meant hospitals and epidurals and the worst pain of your life (that I used to openly wish I would black out through). This film focused on the experience of birth, good and bad, and how different women elect different ways to plan how they want to experience the time with their child. Directly afterward, swooning from the descriptions of unique bonding and euphoric accomplishment that comes from having a home birth (plus a lot of wine), I was convinced that I, too, could give birth in my bathtub one day, while happily munching on granola and doing hynobirthing breathing techniques with my hip-yet-financially-stable-enough-to-provide-a-very-plush-version-of-this-experience-and-completely-emotionally-comfortable-with-witnessing-me-drop-a-baby-out husband. In the weeks since, I have definitely scaled back a bit on these expectations and desires for a birth experience (or having one at all). But yes, I do have a new appreciation for how giving birth is more than just a means to an end.
This was no surprise. You think New York is crazy. You think parents in New York are crazy. You think children in New York are crazy. You think Americans will pay for anything. You think that the pressure to attend the right school is starting earlier than ever. This confirms everything. Denise and I were riveted/disgusted/shocked.
Next up in our Netflix cue was this film about the mass games in North Korea. Denise gets credit for finding this one – and I get demerits for not even knowing what the mass games were before seeing this. Being that it’s the Olympics season right now, this does seem pretty appropriate in contrast (pardon the poor quality video):
I will never eat chicken again. Actually, that is a lie. But really, I will never, ever eat non-organic meat ever again. I had one chicken nugget the other week and literally had to choke back my gag reflex. Anyone who knows me well, knows that my ridiculous sugar addiction will never wane, even with dark and twisty truths about high fructose corn syrup that I now know. But I have become a full-fledged, unabashed Whole Foods snob.
Who knew that fonts were so complex and fascinating? (okay, maybe the rest of the world knew, and I’m just an ignorant handwriting snob that’s more concerned with the lost art of cursive). I was in NYC this past weekend, and I’m still surprised my friend didn’t hurt me by the end of it for pointing out fonts to her every 1/2 block. Afterward, I also felt much more justified for judging a resume that I once received at work written entirely in Comic Sans (aka the ancient font of angst-ridden, 90s-era tween AIM profiles).
Confession: I fell asleep during the second half of this. But not before I developed a whole new appreciation for street art, and got outside of my bubble of just thinking it was a bunch of hooligan vandals.
Somehow, I convinced my friend to wake up early and go see this yesterday morning at the Lincoln Center with me. And yes – it was SO worth it, especially to see it in the center of such a national magnet for the arts and performance. Although it picks up some fairly stereotypical characters to follow (incredibly wealthy family, helicopter parents, token African orphan refugee), it was incredibly riveting, and the performances were mesmerizing. I have never been coordinated enough to even consider dance, but the expression and emotion conveyed through these stories are accessible to many an audience member.
the most adorably talented 9 year olds ever. I hope they get together and have babies (in 15 years)
Although a friend actually convinced me to go see this, and I had never really listened to the band before (friend, don’t hate me)… it was remarkably enjoyable, beyond the fact that half the content was LCD Soundsystem’s last concert. The film follows the lead singer the morning after he ended the group, on good terms, with a final performance in Madison Square Garden. Normally, when I go to concerts or experience something HUGE, the moment engulfs me and I consider the fact that a unique group has assembled at one moment and one place for a specific cause or celebration or purpose… but often, I don’t think about the what’s next component.
Maybe this is me reading wayyyy too into it (actually, this is definitely reading way too into it), but I think the film addresses that uncomfortable limbo after any climactic event – the incredible investment in the present, the here-and-now, the right-here thrill.. it leaves you reeling afterward. It changes you, but then you are left alone to work through and process that change. There’s an innate sense of what’s next? Maybe I thought more into this because I didn’t have as much investment in the actual characters and band on the screen, but SUAPTH made me think about a lot of other life things as a result. You know those life things – weddings, graduation, moving, accidents, fights, races, wins, losses, births, deaths…
There are these moments when it feels as though the world is around you. Brought together by a mutually shared experience and emotion. And then you wake up the next day… and what’s next?
beat that, life.
Recently my friend shared with me that while attending the wedding of a childhood friend, [the groom] had told her that although he was excited for the wedding day, and for the days that would follow with his new wife, he already looked toward the future and wondered: what’s left? what’s next? The next morning he would wake up and be married; the celebration would be over, his wife had already given birth to their first child – these big life moments would fade into the background and what was left was seemingly ordinary. Just like the lead singer of LCD Soundsystem, he would wake up the morning after a final chapter of sorts. It didn’t end badly, in fact it was one hell of a party. But the new phase of his life he was about to begin was one huge blank canvas, and it was up to him to decide each day what he wanted to do next, and how he wanted that canvas to look. That’s an exciting thing to look forward to, but there’s also uncertainty – if everything is great up to that point, will it continue in greatness? Will it get even better? What if you mess it up? Did you pick the right things to do with your time? The sense of opportunity is at the same time thrilling and terrifying.
what if all that awaits is walking your dog?
Sometimes I think this is where the millennial generation encounters their creation of the quarter life crisis. For a generation that has pushed to achieve so much and experience seemingly endless worlds of opportunity, is there a limit to all of this? Does the increased opportunity mean that we reach the end of our limits faster? What happens when you have to start over? We build and build, racing forward until we can reach no further – and then it ends. And we are left the morning after with just ourselves, our thoughts, and hopefully someone else to share the next journey with.
So that’s enough of that for the day, since my light documentary reviews turned into a beast of thoughts instead. Did you know it’s National Cheesecake Day? I’m off to eat some cheesecake!
PS: This is up next on my watch list!
by Denise
My childhood home was recently sold and gutted. This means that in addition to saying goodbye to the house I grew up in (and that was a big enough task to undertake….) I also had to sift through about twenty years worth of random stuff.
You know, like this:
Some of my finest work.
And this…
It’s never too early to be an overachiever. Note my favorite badge: “You Toucan be a Reader!”
One of my biggest tasks was deciding what to do with all of my books. Now that I can not longer use my parents’ house as a free storage facility, everything I own has to be in my physical possession. Gone are the days when I could browse idly through various bookshelves and basement hiding places to gather the tailored collection of titles I felt like housing during that particular year of my life. I used to do that ritual selection annually – before each year of college and before each temporary move. This time, however, I was faced with the overwhelming task of making my entire library somewhat portable. Yikes. Despite the fact that I had parted ways with a good chunk of my children’s books last year (see the original Nostalgic Bookworm post for details), I still had to make some pretty deep cuts.
Without much sentiment at all I gave away outdated English anthologies (Curse you, Norton for constantly creating new editions and making my old investments worthless!), some political textbooks, duplicate novels, a few poets I know I’ll never read again, and pieces of 18th century British literature that I [secretly] hated to begin with. Other decisions were harder. For instance, should I keep Oscar Wilde’s Salome? Sure, it’s incredibly creepy, but it’s also very small so adding it to my pile wouldn’t make much of a difference. Should I keep both copies of James Joyce’s Dubliners since I marked one up in high school (laughable, but interesting margin notes) and the other during a literary walking tour of Dublin? Is it really necessary for me to hang on to my 5th grade favorite, Ella Enchanted? Since it’s almost impossible to read Hemingway for fun (anyone? anyone?) should I just say farewell to Farewell to Arms?*
I know, I know…#EnglishMajorProblems
After much deliberation, the new, “grown-up” bookshelf at my apartment ended up looking like this:
Joceline, please note the giant “pound of love” yarn I have on that bottom shelf. =)
It was then, as I surveyed this newly reduced collection, that I realized how the hodge-podge “survivors” of my literary cleanse seemed to represent me in an interesting, patchwork sort of way. It was as if, in categories, these books (which, for some reason, I just couldn’t bring myself to part with) stood as proof of some of my labels on this blog.
For example…
Proof that I’m Catholic.
Proof that I’m a wonky media nerd.
Proof that I’m American.
Proof I was an English Major…a cheap one. (BTW, my Seamus Heaney collection is signed. I met him in an airport!)
Proof that I am a 2nd generation [half] Asian female.
Proof that I am, in fact, a Janeite.
Hmmm…proof that I have issues? Note: Flannery O’Connor also doubles in the Catholic category. Funny how those two intersect. =)
And, of course…
Nostalgic Bookworm for Life! C.S. Lewis, Judy Blume, J.K. Rowling…gang’s all here.
There’s just something about the books you read during 3rd-8th grade…it’s like they stick to your bones or something. It’s as if you adopt the stories into your identity. See that pink book above in the middle with the blue title? That’s Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself by Judy Blume. I think that worn-out novel has seen every bedroom, apartment, and dormitory I’ve ever inhabited. It’s funny because the book’s not particularly relevant or meaningful to me now, but I remember that at one point it was…and that alone makes me want to keep it. Every now and again I catch myself gravitating towards Sally the same way I would to a photo album or scrapbook. The other day, just as I was thinking about this very subject, I stumbled across a poll on NPR, “Best Ever Teen Novels? Vote for your Favorites.” Of course, I’m incapable of not participating in something like that, so I scrolled down the long list (100+ options, I believe) and picked my ten choices – not necessarily the most worthy choices, but the titles that really “stuck” to me.
Isn’t it amazing how sometimes when you open an old book you not only reread a story, but revisit the version of yourself when you first read it? It never ceases to amaze me. The first chapter of Harry Potter reminds me of being late for soccer practice in 5th grade because I refused to put my book down after Harry got his Hogwarts letter. The Great Gatsby reminds me of my crazy, but amazing high school English teacher who threw someone’s shoe out the window because they were tapping their feet rudely during a reading the “colored shirts” passage in class. The first sentence of Lolita reminds me of being a timid and mildly scandalized college student who reluctantly fell in lasting fascination with with a seductive, poetic narrator.
Luckily, I don’t think I’ll have to worry about parting ways with anymore books for a very long time. After this ordeal my bookshelf has warped into a trim display of selected favorites, marked-up nostalgia, and “literary labels.” Oh – and it also helps that I have this now:
Sorry I’m not sorry, traditionalists. I caved to convenience.
Normally verklempt is the kind of word that I avoid altogether. It implies a lot of emotions and a semi-pretentious vocabulary, neither of which I really desire to posess most of the time. However, recently I’ve had a few too many moments at work where that is legitimately the only way to describe how I feel and why I absolutely love where I am - a whole freaking lot, in fact.
Yesterday was one of those moments, and in tribute to my true inner nerd, I wanted to share it.
Each month we have an all-staff meeting at work. Each month, I leave our meetings feeling as though I am simultaneously drowning and skipping across magic clouds. The task before us is magnificent: create a museum. Raise money, build a collection of artifacts, design and construct a building, develop a narrative, conceptualize that narrative, create educational outreach programs, increase visibility, expand our [tiny] staff, fight for funding in Congress, avoid the next GSA scandal… you know, the usual. But we also have moments in these meetings where the reports stop and staff comes together – these are my verklempt moments, when I realize how outstandingly brilliant these individuals are. When I realize that we are creating a museum that my children will one day walk through. When I realize that we are making the story and experience of a group of people relevant to all Americans.
Yesterday, one of the curators shared a recent acquisition: a palm-sized copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, signed January 1, 1863. One hundred and fifty years ago, there was no internet (shocking, right?) – no Facebook, no blogging, no online news, not even daily news in many parts of the country. When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation freeing slaves, the news took days… weeks… to reach many areas. In order to spread the news, roughly a million palm-sized, portable copies of the Emancipation Proclamation were distributed by Union soldiers as they traveled. Our curator read the account of one abolitionist serviceman, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, as he shared the Emancipation with his troops on a Sunday morning:
Then followed an incident so simple, so touching, so utterly unexpected and startling, that I can scarcely believe it on recalling, though it gave the keynote to the whole day. The very moment the speaker had ceased, and just as I took and waved the flag, which now for the first time meant anything to these poor people, there suddenly arose, close beside the platform, a strong male voice (but rather cracked and elderly), into which two women’s voices instantly blended, singing, as if by an impulse that could no more be repressed than the morning note of the song-sparrow.—
“My Country, ‘tis of thee, Sweet Land of liberty, Of thee I sing!”
…I never saw anything so electric; it made all other words cheap; it seemed the choked voice of a race at last unloosed. Nothing could be more wonderfully unconscious; art could not have dreamed of a tribute to the day of jubilee that should be so affecting; history will not believe it; and when I came to speak of it, after it was ended, tears were everywhere…. Just think of it!—the first day they had ever had a country, the first flag they had ever seen which promised anything to their people, and here, while mere spectators stood in silence, waiting for my stupid words, these simple souls burst out in their lay, as if they were by their own hearths at home! When they stopped, there was nothing to do for it but to speak, and I went on; but the life of the whole day was in those unknown people’s song.
Almost one hundred and fifty years later, our entire staff sat silent and reverant in our meeting when the curator finished this account. This tattered pamphlet bears the mark of the first time many Americans knew they were American. Felt they were American. And it is sitting here with us now, this piece of freedom. It bears the mark of a strong beginning, and a long road ahead – a road that still stretches in front of us.
There are many things that employees complain about at work each day. Supervisors are incompetant, people are rude, the water cooler is empty, there are no windows, lunch breaks are a myth. I, too, find fault in my workplace at times.
But then we have those moments that bring us back to the Museum, to our vision, to our purpose. And that is when I am verklempt. Overwhelmed by the task at hand, but even more overwhelmed by the magnitude of intellect, drive, and passion around me each day. Each day I am challenged, frustrated, overwhelmed, engaged, excited, amazed, and grateful.
So, dear friends, I’ll leave you with one final piece of my work today:
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back.
{Martin Luther King, Jr.}
I interrupt Life in Labels’ regularly scheduled programming (our Label Swap Project/my recent veganism) to address a very timely and important subject: SOPA. It’s the reason you haven’t been able to perform quick fact checks on Wikipedia all day.
“[SOPA] is a bill designed to stop online piracy. It is a way of doing that, in the sense that killing the man in the seat next to you is a way to stop his coughing.”
- Alexandra Petri, The Washington Post
The controversy over the Stop Online Piracy Act (and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act) has been brewing for several months, but today – thanks to Wikipedia, Reddit, Amazon, The Oatmeal, Craigslist, WordPress and countless other staples in our daily cyber lives – the bill has finally been give the attention and seriousness it deserves. If you don’t know much about SOPA, it’s probably not your fault. It’s entirely possible for well informed news-watching individuals to be ignorant of this debate since, in fact, the parent companies of Fox, CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS news have all spent some serious time and money trying to pass this bill. So yeah, you’re not dumb. In fact, some of the smartest friends I have sent me random emails, texts and Facebook messages today asking me about SOPA. For their convenience and yours, I’m listing my favorite background info, news, and opinion pieces that I’ve collected/tweeted over the past few weeks…
SOPA Debate: Who’s involved and what are the stakes? (WaPo slideshow)
Major Television Networks Ignore Internet Blacklist Bill
The White House’s Response to SOPA
Hate SOPA? 6 things you can do to stop it.
Dear Congress: It’s no longer NOT OK to know how the Internet works… (a must read)
How SOPA Affects Students and Educators
VIDEO: Colbert’s SOPA debate (He did this story on December 1st. THIS IS WHY I TRUST THIS MAN!)
The only reason I know about all of this (and have been a crazy, one-issue Twitterer since December) is because I am a very specific breed of nerd. I don’t know anything about healthcare. I don’t follow environmental news. I probably can’t balance your checkbook or teach your child calculus. I probably couldn’t even tell you much about other legislation right now. I just happen to be conveniently obsessed with stuff like this.
SOPA has been haunting me for quite a while. I just remember sitting in front of my computer in December, almost paralyzed with disbelief over this piece of legislation. (Seriously, did someone move me to China when I wasn’t paying attention?) I followed the initial SOPA hearing in real time over Twitter and then, when I had more time, went back to YouTube and watched several hours of the footage myself. It was a NIGHTMARISH AFFAIR filled with high school style bickering, haste, awkward/inaccurate Internet metaphors, and a serious lack of outside expertise. The bright spots in the long ordeal came from Representatives Polis, Issa, Lofgren, and Chaffetz. Their sensible, smart remarks and challenges eased my worried heart (sort of). These people don’t technically represent me as a citizen, but they did that day.
By the way, the people you see above banning together to champion online innovation, free speech, and common sense? Two republicans and two democrats.
I hope this half rant/half resource guide at least peaked your interest and helped make sense of the random website blackouts you may or may not have experienced today. Whether you agree or disagree with my disapproval of SOPA, just promise me you’ll do so passionately.
Sincerely,
This week I started reviewing Neuroscience…it’s always a little mind-boggling (ha) learning about how the brain works (so meta).
Terrible puns aside, I am enjoying this brief dip into Neuro. Learning about the brain’s marvelous complexity and thinking about thinking is fodder for the Eternal Wow if I’ve ever seen it. I mean, the very fact that mankind stopped to wonder about, and then dissect the very organ that does the dissecting–when I stop to appreciate the existence of thought and memory and learning and discovery and, I don’t know, the fact that all of our consciousness comes from neurons trading packages of chemicals–that’s when I shut down into a big pile of woooooowwww (and consequently am very poor at conveying that wow-ness to others).
I did have a point, though. I wanted to tell you guys about hemineglect, or what happens when this system goes wrong. An injury to the half of the brain on its parietal lobe (let’s say on the right side) can knock out a patient’s ability to process any information coming in from the left half of their world. They will only eat the food on the right half of their plates, or fail to brush the left side of their head or put makeup on their left face. If you ask them to cut a candy bar in half, they’ll cut it into a big three-quarter piece and a quarter piece–it’s like they don’t see anything on the left of their visual field. It get can so bad that patients will look down at their left arm and say, “that’s not mine, I don’t have an arm there.” Weird, right?
If you ask a patient with hemineglect to copy the picture on the left, they'll draw the picture on the right.
It’s not really that they don’t see or sense the information coming in from the left side of the world. Their eyes work fine, from the light hitting the retina to the visual centers of the brain. It’s where all that information gets processed in the site of the injury that the system glitches. And they can’t tell, either–it’s not as though they can tell that half of their visual field is blacked out or gone. It’s more like if everyone else had 360-degree vision and you saw things “normally”: you wouldn’t notice that you couldn’t see behind you, because that’s just how your eyes worked.
It’s when you learn limitations of the brain that you really see that it’s built on levels of tiny parts, that this crazy and intricate system is still constrained by chopping up bits of information into halves, where a set of cells fails and you’re left only seeing half a piece of chocolate (obviously an injustice). And the example of hemineglect is concrete–it can be explained through cellular pathways and neuronal principles, but it underscores the fact that often, our brains pick and choose what we see when we look at the world, literally and figuratively. If a brain injury can make it so that I neglect an entire half of my own body, my mind can pretty easily focus on a few things and block out the things that I deem too difficult or unimportant or just don’t want to think about right now. I can read a political news article and only see it the way I want the world to be, or get preoccupied about my to-do list and just…neglect all the other parts of life.
So here’s to trying to live without forgetting the left half of life. Happy (early) Holidays to you all!
Maybe you were a bookworm who read science fiction and fantasy novels during lunch. Maybe you spent recess collecting bugs and studying their anatomy.
Maybe you wore over-sized glasses before it was cool. Maybe you skipped a few grades and – to make matters worse – didn’t manage to tame those stubborn, frizzy locks until college.
Perhaps you were a chatterbox who scared your peers with your excessive knowledge of random subjects. Then again, maybe you were just shy and misunderstood…
Well guess what, female nerds? You’re older now and it’s 2011; glasses are in (Thank you, Tina Fey!), your frizzy locks have been tamed, and all of that geeky knowledge as morphed into passion and direction. You no longer fight the temptation to reference that random historical fact you’re just itching to share. You no longer feel the need to blush when you recite the first 100 digits of Pi (on March 14th, of course). After years of observation and life experience, you’ve finally realized that being smart can be cool and, by nature, “beauty” cannot be narrowly defined. In fact, all of those strange, previously embarrassing habits turned out to be the foundational building blocks of the individual you’ve become. Funny how things work out, right?
So, there’s no need to cringe when awkward memories resurface and briefly force you back into that familiar place of insecurity. Instead, shake off the negativity and celebrate the “Rise of the Female Geek.” Be proud of your steadfast nerdiness and be grateful for the parents, friends and teachers who encouraged it.
And, if that’s still not enough to make you feel better, watch the video below for a much needed dose of perspective…
See? It could have been so much, much worse! =)
Denise, a lover of nerds
P.S. Just for fun…
I love lab/literature crossover puns. (Also, for you non-science people, EtOH is shorthand for ethyl alcohol.) Edited to add: For those of you who can’t read this lab jokester’s writing, it says “EtOH, Brute?” HAAAA
1) You and your friends dress up like this for Halloween.
I still have my glow-in-the-dark ALT shirt. I worked out in it yesterday and when I stepped outside it was dark and the letters lit up. People stared. It was awesome
2. You blog FAR more than you should.
3. Someone you don’t know posts a picture of your school library on Facebook and tags you in it.
Alderman, the second string Library of Congress
4. A picture like this one exists:
Joceline made the molecules. I'm just wearing them.
5. You made this video, prompting one of your former classmates to point out your extreme nerdiness.
6. You just posted all of the above online…without shame.
Hopefully, you’d never guess that I am a computer geek just by talking to me. Unless, of course, you asked me about my major or where I was working. I usually don’t fit the visual stereotypes that are often associated with this label. Spending so much time in the computer science department, I’ve started to notice the visual cues: Baggy jeans, old tennis shoes, unusually strange graphic tees, and otherwise bad hygienic habits. My brother (who is two years younger and following my footsteps in computer science) often jokes that we are the best dressed guys in the Talmage (the computer science/math building at BYU).
One thing that really bothers me? Technology ignorance. I want to be able to expect people to have a basic understanding about computers and the Internet. I personally don’t know as much as people think I do, I just know how to find answers. I worked as a support technician for a while and mostly I just tinkered around until I got things to work, or I read article after article to figure out what was wrong. Yeah, it may help that I can read the geek talk, like how much RAM do I need or what is 64-bit, but I normally just search around.
I’ve become convinced that all undergraduates should be required to take something akin to Computer Science 100. It wouldn’t hurt anyone to know what HTTP is or how HTML makes web pages. In fact, it would only help them to get a better job, or even just to not look so foolish.
Quick story about the looking foolish bit: Recently, as Lauren mentioned yesterday, I have had too many opportunities for my own good. People are always asking me to work for/with them. Earlier this semester, an acquaintance asked me to work on the development of his idea for the BYU Business Plan Competition. I initially said yes, but the more I talked to him, the more I realized he knew nothing about how much it would cost (time and money) for something like his product to actually be built, the decisions that he needed to make to build it, or what the technology would be able to do. I spent several long phone calls with him repeatedly saying, “No, that’s not how it works” and then trying to explain it again in simpler terms. The fact that he thought he could have students build his project in a month (for free) just made him look ignorant. It’s embarrassing for someone who thinks they are going into business building web applications to know nothing about how they work or what it takes to build them.
That said, I don’t mind helping people out, I know not everyone can spend hours and hours programming and studying how that stuff works.
In conclusion, become a computer geek. Your life will be easier.
And the ladies (especially my wife) love it.
Disjointed post from me this time—it’s the last week of the Musculoskeletal Integument block, and we medschool zombies have an anatomy practical and a final exam this weekend to prepare for. Perhaps it’s fitting that I write about being a nerd, since I’m up to my eyeballs in artery names, tendon insertions, weird skin conditions, and obscure nerve and bone diseases (think carpal tunnel syndrome or dwarfism).
Anyway, I identify hugely with the label ‘nerd’. It practically comes with the territory being tiny with terrible nearsightedness, doesn’t it? Being small, underaged, and four-eyesed already puts me at a disadvantage, but when you throw in my upbringing, you’ll see how I’ve pretty much been raised a nerd.
What am I talking about? Well, my parents are pretty remarkable people. They have views on bringing up children that may be very familiar to some people (read: other Asians, and yes, I’m labeling here), and might be completely foreign to others. Case in point: the below picture is how my mom, a chemist, labels various baking ingredients.
HAc = Vinegar, NaCl = salt (iodized), and sucrose = sugar. She does this because she's used to lab, and also because it's "quicker and more specific this way". God I love my mom.
When I was about nine or so, Friday night became “presentation night” in our house. My sisters and I would look up something on the internet, learn a few things about it, and give a short presentation about what we’d learned. The only one I remember giving was about the Portugese Man-of-War (the deadliest jellyfish in the world) and its habitat, diet, mating habits, etc.
Another favorite pastime was math and logic time with my dad, a mechanical engineer. He would think of problems (If Train A is leaving the station at 3 pm going 65 miles an hour and Train B leaves at 4 pm at 70 miles per hour in the opposite direction, and they are 300 miles apart, when will they cross if Train B has to make a stop at 4:30 pm for snacks for 15 minutes and there is a goat, a cabbage, and a tiger on Train A?), and we’d try to solve them. We had a classroom-style whiteboard that graced the wall of our kitchen where we’d sit and draw all over, trying to figure out his questions. Man…I miss that thing. I’m determined to get my kids one just like it, so I can recreate the joy that we felt whenever my dad would bring home a fresh pack of Expo markers for us to “make art” with.
Seriously, the way I’m describing my childhood might make you think I was probably the weirdest child ever. And in a way, you’d be right. My mom taught me from an early age to love plants, so I used to play “Apothecary” with dry leaves and flowers, making potions with in the backyard. I was always too bookish, too interested in bugs, nature, science, and too clothed in overlarge tshirts and knee socks not to inspire some feelings of amusement in the grownups around me, and probably mild contempt from my peers.
But although I did get my share of teasing—check my short post to understand more about my persona—life was kind to me. I don’t remember being hurt if people did say anything about my geekiness (I was never ashamed of myself, so I never felt bad if someone else thought I should be). And I was lucky enough to go through the cruelest years of life, high school, among my own. Thomas Jefferson High School is a veritable “nerd school” in my area, and when I look back thinking how it could have been, I’m infinitely grateful that I was in that accepting environment, where no one judged you no matter how much you liked learning.
Me and two science-major friends (Mara in the center and Lizzie, our first guest-poster) thinking lofty, science nerd thoughts.
And I guess it’s come full circle now. In med school, (almost) everyone here is a nerd, just like me. We enjoy what we learn about the intricacies of the human body and disease and recovery (no matter how much some people may pretend not to be, we are all overeager med students). Thank goodness I’ve found a place where being bookish doesn’t automatically make you socially awkward. And if you are a little socially awkward, well, that’s far from a bad thing. I’ll accept you anyway, as a fellow nerd.
