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slightly tangential topic, but I had to respond to this because I do hear this from my fellow US citizens: >>> "* Science, at least when I went through high sc

slightly tangential topic, but I had to respond to this because I do hear this from my fellow US citizens: >>> "* Science, at least when I went through high school was Not Cool. It was for "nerds", something that you didn't really want to be labeled. I don't know if it's still that way in the US, but counteracting that effect might not be a bad idea." I've got to be honest... what High Schools did you guys go to?? I had friends on the football team who were into science. I had friends who didn't care about sports and were into writing. I had friends who had letter jackets, I had friends who rode motorcycles. I was into computers and nobody cared. I first cut my teeth with CSS helping out with the website for our school newspaper. I first learned to program by messing around and making silly ASCII racing games on my graphing calculator in BASIC. Everyone who cared just kind of thought it was neat, or didn't care and we talked about other things. All this labeling of "nerd" and "jocks"... I really don't get it. There were many circles of friends to join. Or you could be a loner and that's fine too. Looking back, I'm not even sure what label I would have been given (never considered myself a nerd, I was too poor of a student :p) Did I miss something, or does everyone else just get caught up in labeling waaayyy too much? That's just not the reality I experienced, and I never saw the ecosystem through that prism. shrugs

dnautics 13y ago
I always suspected the generation above me (graybeard professors) had to deal with that culture, and that's the reason why scientists are such phenomenally bad leaders - they didn't really interact with other people during their formative years. By the time I went to grad school, almost all of my male peers were actually "jock" types (and really nice guys to be honest), and really smart, too, but that could be field-specific, 20 out of my 24 classmates were into synthetic chemistry.
- jff 13y ago
  I think people who are into science and tech are getting more varied. We laugh about the idea of the football-obsessed "jock", but for some reason locking yourself in a room to play Final Fantasy all weekend was seen as admirably geeky. Most of the guys I studied engineering with had participated in sports, many were quite good. A lot were into cars. When you stop trying to live up to that pathetic Jargon File description of a geek, late nights with techno blasting and Chinese takeout, you can get out and realize that there's a bigger world out there. You join the football team and discover that the quarterback really loves watching Star Trek, rather than dismissing him as a "dumb jock" because he has a number on his shirt.
davidw 13y ago
Maybe things have changed some. Mostly, the people I hung out with at high school did not have issues with science and math, but there were definitely people there who did. I suspect most people remember me as being really into bicycle racing more than school, so I don't suppose I was seen as the nerdiest of the nerdy, and had friends, girlfriends, and so on. Also, being in a college town probably meant more of a focus on education. CSS? Definitely a different time! This came out the year I graduated from high school: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt
rdtsc 13y ago
There is a large difference depending on part of country (deep south, northeast, west coast), town, and part of town. In some rural communities football and ROTC is glorified and science is for the nerds. In other parts of the country it is different. > Or you could be a loner and that's fine too. Or you got picked on, beaten and made fun of and adults (who have also mostly bought into the "sports are God" mentality) didn't really care to do much about it. Now I am talking like I had extensive experience with this, but in reality I went to one American High School for one year only, otherwise I went to one in Eastern Europe. I would say overall the East European one was poor, didn't have any extra curricular activities _but_ science, math and English (foreign language) was top notch. Just to compare, math material I studies in 9th grade back home was taught to seniors in 12th grade in US. It was nice tutoring them math. And I also got a taste of the sharp boundaries of cliques and social groups in US High Schools. These are the "band" people, they hang out together, these people smoke pot, they hang out together, these are the nerds they talk about Start Trek and hang out together and I had to pick one. I picked the nerds, and it was strange how many things revolved around "whom do you hang out with". I definitely saw that as a negative side.
- jff 13y ago
  I guess my experience at such a small rural community was an outlier. Football was huge, our team was great, but we also had a good band program and quite a few of the band members were also football players--they'd march the half-time show in their football uniforms. People didn't get beaten, the rare fights stemmed from personal conflicts rather than "NERRRRRRDS!". Nobody was really subjected to harassment that I ever saw. Our school was something like 75% Hispanic and 25% white. The white kids were maybe 50% Mormon, which may have had some effect on behavior. You know who cared more about cliques than anyone else? The try-hard "rebels" who obsessed over "jocks" and "preps". I socialized with everyone, and I think that was closer to the norm. I ate lunch at the band room with the band kids (many of whom were in cross country with me), I shot the shit in class with the stoner kids (who were also band kids and athletes), I went to game night with the Mormon kids (who were in band and sports). I think this whole "nerd" obsession with "nerds" vs. "jocks", the image of getting stuffed in lockers or beat up, I think it's seated in a past that's been gone for a while. I'm sorry you thought you had to pick one group.
jlgreco 13y ago
In what I see as the best case scenario (reasonably approximated by my school experience), cool kids can do nerdy things, but they are without doubt "cool despite those hobbies/interests". The cool football player can be on the rocket club and nobody will question him about that, but neither will it be scoring him any "cool points". Maybe that is how it should be, but I am inclined to think that STEM-type clubs should be glorified and looked up to.
clarkm 13y ago
> That's just not the reality I experienced, and I never saw the ecosystem through that prism. shrugs I agree. Did you go to a small high school? I suspect most of this labeling happens in large high schools. When a grade has more than 150 or so students[1], it becomes impossible for them to all interact with each other. They get divided up into different classrooms, take different classes, each lunch at staggered times, and form small, non-overlapping cliques. At least, that's the impression I've gotten from talking to people about it. My high school was small and homogeneous: everyone knew each other, took many of the same classes, had the same teachers, etc. So the world described in pg's Nerds essay[2] is pretty foreign to me. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbars_number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbars_number [2] http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
- gavinlynch 13y ago
  Interestingly, it was a very large HS. My graduating class was 800 strong.

dnautics 13y ago

I always suspected the generation above me (graybeard professors) had to deal with that culture, and that's the reason why scientists are such phenomenally bad leaders - they didn't really interact with other people during their formative years. By the time I went to grad school, almost all of my male peers were actually "jock" types (and really nice guys to be honest), and really smart, too, but that could be field-specific, 20 out of my 24 classmates were into synthetic chemistry.

jff 13y ago
I think people who are into science and tech are getting more varied. We laugh about the idea of the football-obsessed "jock", but for some reason locking yourself in a room to play Final Fantasy all weekend was seen as admirably geeky. Most of the guys I studied engineering with had participated in sports, many were quite good. A lot were into cars. When you stop trying to live up to that pathetic Jargon File description of a geek, late nights with techno blasting and Chinese takeout, you can get out and realize that there's a bigger world out there. You join the football team and discover that the quarterback really loves watching Star Trek, rather than dismissing him as a "dumb jock" because he has a number on his shirt.

davidw 13y ago

Maybe things have changed some. Mostly, the people I hung out with at high school did not have issues with science and math, but there were definitely people there who did. I suspect most people remember me as being really into bicycle racing more than school, so I don't suppose I was seen as the nerdiest of the nerdy, and had friends, girlfriends, and so on. Also, being in a college town probably meant more of a focus on education. CSS? Definitely a different time! This came out the year I graduated from high school: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt

rdtsc 13y ago

There is a large difference depending on part of country (deep south, northeast, west coast), town, and part of town. In some rural communities football and ROTC is glorified and science is for the nerds. In other parts of the country it is different. > Or you could be a loner and that's fine too. Or you got picked on, beaten and made fun of and adults (who have also mostly bought into the "sports are God" mentality) didn't really care to do much about it. Now I am talking like I had extensive experience with this, but in reality I went to one American High School for one year only, otherwise I went to one in Eastern Europe. I would say overall the East European one was poor, didn't have any extra curricular activities _but_ science, math and English (foreign language) was top notch. Just to compare, math material I studies in 9th grade back home was taught to seniors in 12th grade in US. It was nice tutoring them math. And I also got a taste of the sharp boundaries of cliques and social groups in US High Schools. These are the "band" people, they hang out together, these people smoke pot, they hang out together, these are the nerds they talk about Start Trek and hang out together and I had to pick one. I picked the nerds, and it was strange how many things revolved around "whom do you hang out with". I definitely saw that as a negative side.

jff 13y ago
I guess my experience at such a small rural community was an outlier. Football was huge, our team was great, but we also had a good band program and quite a few of the band members were also football players--they'd march the half-time show in their football uniforms. People didn't get beaten, the rare fights stemmed from personal conflicts rather than "NERRRRRRDS!". Nobody was really subjected to harassment that I ever saw. Our school was something like 75% Hispanic and 25% white. The white kids were maybe 50% Mormon, which may have had some effect on behavior. You know who cared more about cliques than anyone else? The try-hard "rebels" who obsessed over "jocks" and "preps". I socialized with everyone, and I think that was closer to the norm. I ate lunch at the band room with the band kids (many of whom were in cross country with me), I shot the shit in class with the stoner kids (who were also band kids and athletes), I went to game night with the Mormon kids (who were in band and sports). I think this whole "nerd" obsession with "nerds" vs. "jocks", the image of getting stuffed in lockers or beat up, I think it's seated in a past that's been gone for a while. I'm sorry you thought you had to pick one group.

jlgreco 13y ago

In what I see as the best case scenario (reasonably approximated by my school experience), cool kids can do nerdy things, but they are without doubt "cool despite those hobbies/interests". The cool football player can be on the rocket club and nobody will question him about that, but neither will it be scoring him any "cool points". Maybe that is how it should be, but I am inclined to think that STEM-type clubs should be glorified and looked up to.

clarkm 13y ago

> That's just not the reality I experienced, and I never saw the ecosystem through that prism. shrugs I agree. Did you go to a small high school? I suspect most of this labeling happens in large high schools. When a grade has more than 150 or so students[1], it becomes impossible for them to all interact with each other. They get divided up into different classrooms, take different classes, each lunch at staggered times, and form small, non-overlapping cliques. At least, that's the impression I've gotten from talking to people about it. My high school was small and homogeneous: everyone knew each other, took many of the same classes, had the same teachers, etc. So the world described in pg's Nerds essay[2] is pretty foreign to me. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbars_number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbars_number [2] http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

gavinlynch 13y ago
Interestingly, it was a very large HS. My graduating class was 800 strong.