How Nerds Saved My Life
I was clearly headed down the wrong path in elementary school. As I moved through grades 1 through 6, I became more and more indifferent about school. I regularly skipped classes, and I got into fights on the schoolyard. My academic future did not look bright.
The odd thing is that I was basically a good student. I made mostly A’s on my report card. I was not sullen or disrespectful — I was just painfully restless and curious to an extreme. I knew I would be punished for my bad deeds, and I accepted the punishments without complaint. In fact, the punishments were often extra work assignments which, in truth, I mostly enjoyed.
So the problem was not that I hated schoolwork — the problem was that I hated school. School was soul-crushingly boring to me. I would groan each morning as I left the house to walk to school — it felt as if I was headed to a dungeon for another day of slow torture. And as I grew older, the burden of the boredom weighed ever more heavily on me — it was becoming more than I was willing to tolerate. Probably the only thing that prevented me from abandoning school entirely was the knowledge of how disappointing such an action would be to my parents.
Then, at the beginning of sixth grade, an odd series of events began to unfold. I was pulled out of my homeroom class every so often to take tests. I was subjected to a wide variety of strange tests — tests on personality, spatial understanding, pattern recognition, word analogies, reading comprehension, writing, mathematics, etc. And I took what I suspect were a variety of I.Q. tests. At first I was bothered by the tests, but I eventually began to look forward to them.
And then, shortly before Christmas, two people came to my home to interview me. There was Mr. McGow, a science teacher and Miss Holly, an English teacher. I couldn’t imagine why teachers were coming to my home — I figured I must really be in trouble this time!
The two teachers were polite, but quite direct. They asked me a range of questions about books I had read, my hobbies, my friends, my family, what school subjects I liked, what television shows I liked, etc. Overall, the interview lasted about two hours as I recall.
I had a couple other interviews over the next month or so, each time with different people. The end result of all the tests and the interviews was that I was one of about 20 students in my local area selected for an experimental honors class to be conducted throughout my junior high school years (grades 7–9). The idea was that the 20 selected students would take all our academic classes together for the full three years of junior high school. This was incredibly strange, particularly for a medium-sized city in south Georgia where I was living at the time.
I wasn’t really aware of what was taking place when I showed up for my first day of class in seventh grade. I had been dreading, as always, the start of another boring school year. However, it didn’t take long before I realized that this was not going to be a continuation of elementary school. My fellow classmates were an odd assortment of nerds with personalities ranging from slightly off-kilter to outright bizarre. As far as I could tell, this group of geeks seemed to have only one trait in common — all of them seemed whip smart! Well, now I was intrigued!
As examples, my classmates included: Richard, the tinkerer, who built an operational laser for the 8th grade science fair; Darren, the science fiction fan, who seemed to have read every sci-fi book ever written and who spoke in sci-fi-ese; Bill, the joker, who loved puns and practical jokes; Paula, the perfectionist, who had color-coded notebooks for each class and who had emotional breakdowns if she ever make less than 90% on any test; Carla, the curvy con-artist, who could wrap the boy-nerds around her little finger, and Mary Jane, the shy book-worm and rival to Paula, who sat in front of me in most classes and who I loved to make smile.
As for me, I was the jack-of-all-trades type, equally interested in all subjects. Being a nerd back in those days was not good for one’s popularity — we were “those weird smarty-pants people” or “those eggheads”. In some ways, I had it better than the others in the group because I was also athletic and played on the school’s sport teams. Of course, this meant that I was truly an odd duck, with one foot in the popular jock group and another foot in the unpopular egghead group. I think my classmates had a difficult time figuring out what to make of me!
This egghead group had demanding teachers for all subjects. We were assigned massive amounts of homework. We eggheads were neither coddled nor abused — we were simply treated like people who were expected to perform well academically. The whole experience, which lasted for three full school years (grades 7 through 9) was unbelievably challenging to us eggheads. And I flourished in it!
I remember that ‘competition’ was not considered a bad thing back in those egghead classes. Both competition and collaboration were encouraged through various in-class and special project assignments. When we eggheads competed, we competed fiercely, and there were indeed winners and losers in the competition. However, we competed as rivals, not enemies. And we routinely collaborated with and helped the very rivals with whom we also competed. As I look back on the experience, it seems to me that the intense competition was normal and healthy and served as wonderful preparation for the real world.
I have no doubt that my junior high school experiences with that weird group of eggheads saved my life in many ways. I still remember my feelings of relief and joy at the discovery that there were lots of people who were like me, academically at least. I went from total indifference to full engagement in school almost overnight. I thrived in that environment in which much was expected of me and easy excuses for less than full effort were not entertained. The experience changed many of the ways I looked at myself and the world, all for the better I believe.
Unfortunately, the eggheads scattered after junior high school. Many of us moved to other parts of the country. The high school I attended did not have an egghead class; however, I had learned from my junior high school egghead experience how to keep myself challenged, independently of teachers and classes. Therefore, I never again sank into the kind of boredom I felt before my egghead experience. Thank goodness for that!
I learned later that my junior high school had to eventually abandon its egghead experiment. The country went through a period of time during which it became the vogue, often in the name of ‘diversity’ or ‘fairness’, not to create separate classes for academically talented students. The thinking of some ‘experts’ was that students of all academic levels should be mixed together for ‘social learning’ purposes. I believe that line of reasoning is logically and practically flawed and that it likely does irreversible damage to kids who could be transformed by an egghead environment like the one I was fortunate enough to experience.
I sometimes have nightmares about what my life would have been like if I had entered a junior high school without an egghead class. Without that egghead experience, I cannot imagine that I would have been able to endure the boredom of junior high and high school. I may well have dropped out of school entirely, just to stay sane. I most certainly doubt that I would have had enough interest in academics to go on to college. And who knows what kind of career, if any, I would have pursued. Ugh, it’s ugly to think about!
So, to all you geeky junior high school eggheads and to all you ‘mean’ teachers, I say “Thank you for saving my life!”
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