Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Tuesday July 08 2014, @02:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the is-it-the-same-for-nerds? dept.

From The Daily Mail:

Researchers followed the lives of adolescents for ten years and discovered the ones who were considered 'geeks' went on to outperform the others by the time they reached early adulthood.

The study, which examined 184 teenagers from the age of 13, found those considered popular in their early and mid-teens were more likely to suffer drug abuse problems and social isolation as adults. Academics at the University of Virginia also said that the group's definition of 'cool' changed over time. They said boys aged 13 who exhibited 'pseudo-mature behaviour' such as kissing girls and committing minor vandalism were considered popular. However, ten years on, many of them found it difficult to interact with their peers and engage in meaningful relationships.

The findings of the study - published in the journal Child Development - will be familiar to fans of the Lindsay Lohan film Mean Girls, which charts the fall from grace of high school pupils who are obsessed with their image and popularity.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:04PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:04PM (#65966)

    As an older guy with peculiar ideas, I've more or less been "stuck" with the idea of peak theory where you kinda choose when you want to "peak" in life. If you decide your peak time of life is 13, that sounds like a lot of fun ... till you're 25 and wondering WTF happened.

    All my observations of friends / family / coworkers seems to fit this peculiar hypothesis of mine. The coolest / hottest / whatever at any given age invariably was not even in the running either before or after.

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by Sir Garlon on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:15PM

      by Sir Garlon (1264) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:15PM (#65974)

      So that means there's still hope for me? Maybe I'll peak in my 50s ... or 60s ...

      --
      [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:38PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:38PM (#65989)

      Or it could be more complicated than that. [nih.gov]

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by bucc5062 on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:06PM

    by bucc5062 (699) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:06PM (#65968)

    it seems like a "no duh" type of conclusion. From my own anecdotal experience, children who had it "easier" in their early years, (looks, money, status, physique, girls (or boys), didn't understand failure, rejection or suffering as they grow into adulthood. They say childhood is rough, but I think adulthood is even worse for you lose the support structure that was there as a child. Failure has more intense consequences. Look at what happens to child actors as the transition into young adults. Most tiems it is not pretty.

    Nerds, geeks, those standing on the wall or outside the fence had to learn how to cope with negative emotions early and maybe often. They learned compassion for that is what they desired. They learned empathy to survive, and sometimes they didn't. As adults they can better cope with the failures of life much better, they had to use their brains, not their body and today's world does not require a hunter's muscles to survive, but it does require a active mind.

    --
    The more things change, the more they look the same
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by CRCulver on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:15PM

    by CRCulver (4390) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:15PM (#65973) Homepage

    When I was in high school, I tilted towards the geek side of the social scene, a group of people who watched anime, tinkered with computers, learned Japanese or more obscure languages , and thought certain classes were the bomb. Some of us were self-conscious in front of the "cool kids", who were athletic and had sexual prowess, with no passion for learning though they maintained decent grades.

    As the years went by and my graduating class has kept in touch on Facebook, I've watched some of the "cool kids" do very well: their social skills allowed them to make business connections and advance to ever higher-paying positions. On the other hand, the geeks crashed and burned at various points like college, post-college employment, or clumsily knocking some girl up/getting pregnant, and some of them are now on public assistance, unable to make it in the real world.

    Perhaps there are some high school outcasts of an intellectual bent who do well, but there must be plenty of other geeks whose misfit status and unusual interests prove no help to them at all.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:32PM

      by frojack (1554) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:32PM (#65983) Journal

      So some cool kids do well.
      And some geeks fail.

      That would have been a significant data point if TFA had said the opposite was ALWAYS true. But that isn't what was stated.

      You also have to allow for the self promotional bias of the cool kids posting on Facebook, which may be the only place where they can relive their glory days.

      Finally, Facebook hasn't been around long enough to use as a tool to measure much of anything, let alone those who peak later in life. If your graduating class used Facebook, it must have been a recent graduation. Give it time.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:38PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:38PM (#65988)

        "graduating class used Facebook"

        My graduating class uses facebook today, at least the "reunion" group has a lot of traffic.

        Zuckerberg was in first grade when we graduated (I think?).

        The two claims are not in conflict with each other.

        My dad's graduating class uses Facebook, their reunion organizers tracked me down that way trying to reach him.

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by CRCulver on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:45PM

        by CRCulver (4390) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:45PM (#65995) Homepage

        If your graduating class used Facebook, it must have been a recent graduation. Give it time.

        I graduated from high school in the 1990s. After Facebook became popular in the last decade, most of us from that graduating class found each other again there. I think that possibility should have been obvious to you unless you are trying to willfully misinterpret and hassle your peers here, which looks rather likely on the basis of your SN posting history.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:34PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:34PM (#65985)

      I've watched some of the "cool kids" do very well: their social skills allowed them to make business connections and advance to ever higher-paying positions.

      What about the "cool kids" that didn't make business connections? I've occasionally run into some of the "cool kids" when I visit my hometown, and they're always doing nothing spectacular - selling cars, running a small restaurant, office drone, etc. I'm sure some of them make it, but the majority don't, and by 45 the girls in particular have to find something other to do than look cute.

      For what it's worth, most of my geeky friends haven't crashed and burned - the worst of them found the same kind of work the cool kids are now doing, the best of them went on to get advanced degrees and decent jobs. I think it also depends greatly on your definition of "geek": If you're working hard at studying and able to get into Harvard, that's one kind of geek. If you're working hard at mastering Call of Duty, you're a different kind of geek. The first kind has a much better shot than the second.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:44PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:44PM (#65993)

        More like geek vs misfit rather than different flavors of geek.

        I will say the ability to turn into a geek = long duration intense focus. If you focus on Mario Bros, thats not helping much financially, on programming languages helps quite a bit. You can turn ability to concentrate into $$$. Being "cool" doesn't usually take much concentration ability.

      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday July 08 2014, @05:49PM

        by frojack (1554) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @05:49PM (#66080) Journal

        All the gregarious types of cool kids in my HS class are now working at the local mill, usually after knocking up their girlfriend, and getting married early. Not all are failures, some have worked up rather high in the management chain of that industry. Some of the girls married money, but most just settled for Joe Hockey, who has now changed his name to Joe Sixpack, most of them never left town.

        Still I don't count them as failures. They have nice homes, grandkids, and live reasonably comfortable lives.

        I got the hell out of that town very early. I haven't spoken to any of them since my Dad's Funeral which was a long time ago. Several of them ended up working for my Dad, so they felt obligated I suppose, god knows they weren't in my circle then, and I have no reason add them now.

        I don't know a single adult over 40 who has much contact with their high school friends, Facebook or no Facebook. The entire concept of clinging to your juvenile friends seems, well, sort of juvenile. I have far more long lasting friends that I met in College than high school.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by tempest on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:07PM

      by tempest (3050) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:07PM (#66011)

      My main problem with the article is the definition of "cool". Kissing girls and committing minor vandalism at 13 sounds more like the road to becoming a juvenile delinquent than becoming popular to me, but then again I'm behind the times and grew up in a small town. So I guess I'd wonder in your example, were those you considered popular doing things like vandalism?

      I think classifying popularity for a particular set of reasons isn't the way it really works. I worked at a gas station with a guy who was the most popular in our class. He was great at sports, smart, had good grades and was fun to hang out with. I also knew popular kids who were worthless piles of shit. The difference was that the second group were "crowd pleasers". It's easy (if not ugly) to win at popularity in school because you don't have to produce anything of value. Once you get out into the real world and your (former) popularity doesn't mean anything. Then what? Usually this is where the loser popular kids show their true colors, and they don't go anywhere. I don't think that's true of everyone, and some kids were popular because they were great people and do fine later in life.

      Some of the unpopular kids were unpopular because they were freaks. Usually it's a miracle if they do well in life but it happens. About the only thing I'd say I firmly believe, is that kids who could have been popular that forsake popularity in favor of working harder to improve themselves. It's not exactly a revelation they do fine in later life.

    • (Score: 1) by Buck Feta on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:35PM

      by Buck Feta (958) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:35PM (#66031) Journal

      The meaning of the work "geek" seems to depend heavily on which generation is using it.

      --
      - fractious political commentary goes here -
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:48PM (#65999)

    ...Exibit A: Facebook - Mark Zuckerberg's multi-billion dollar moneyspinner.

    If that doesn't count, nothing will.

    The alpha geeks and alpha cool kids get ahead in life and leave
    the rest in the dust...only for death to put an end to their
    ambitious exploits.

    How will they be remembered after they're gone?

    Will they be forgotten?

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:51PM

    by PizzaRollPlinkett (4512) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:51PM (#66002)

    The idea that popular kids suffer from social isolation as adults sounds just plain nutty to me.

    Gregarious, popular people tend to continue that trajectory through life, and tend to have easier lives where they use their skills at schmoozing to fit in and glide through life. They usually have no real worries about getting jobs or supporting themselves, and seem to have large social support networks. Generally, life is easy and not a struggle for them.

    Unpopular people who can't easily form social bonds tend to have difficult lives with a lot of social insecurity and no support network. The best scenario for them is to have some kind of valuable, rare skill that people will pay them to use, and overlook their social deficits.

    Seems like I could do a study of everyone I've ever encountered in life and contradict this study all to pieces.

    --
    (E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:21PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:21PM (#66019)

      "no real worries about getting jobs"

      In about '96 or so, writing Perl code for this new "web" thing for you don't wanna know how much $$$/hr, I stopped back at home at a food store for a few things and the cashier was this hot chick from high school who wouldn't date me, at least in high school. We talked a bit about what we did post-high school, she wrote her number on the receipt and insisted I call her, I never did call her, we both knew she was digging for gold and we both knew what I wanted, so its not necessarily wrong, but... So you turned looking that good at age 18, into operating a cash register part time? Thats all?

      Another time back home at a dentist office (long story), I ran into a buddy from the football team who I used to lift weights with (so this wasn't a jock used to beat up the geek story, but still, he was way cooler than I was back in high school). Turns out he has no career prospects at all other than selling insurance on commission. Oh man, sorry dude. So being a star defensive lineman with a cheerleader on each arm at 18 can be turned into ... commissioned insurance sales? That's all? I mean, its better than door to door magazine salesman, but not much.

      I'm sure both "cool kids" had no problem getting their jobs, but... I'd rather have a hard time getting a job in tech, than a really easy time getting hired as a part time grocery store cashier or commissioned insurance salesman.

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by tempest on Tuesday July 08 2014, @07:10PM

        by tempest (3050) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @07:10PM (#66127)

        she wrote her number on the receipt and insisted I call her, I never did call her, we both knew she was digging for gold and we both knew what I wanted, so its not necessarily wrong, but... So you turned looking that good at age 18, into operating a cash register part time? Thats all?

        Uh, she's only operating a cash register because you didn't call her dude. How is she supposed to realize her full potential as a gold digger if she can't get to the mine?! :p

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @05:03PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @05:03PM (#66046)

      Not to burst anyone's bubble on these threads but 1) the daily mail? Isnt that sort of trashy news (least that is what I have heard)? 2) what study? There is no link to the study?

      This seems to be a fluff piece meant to puff up someones pride in who they are.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by evilviper on Wednesday July 09 2014, @04:29AM

      by evilviper (1760) on Wednesday July 09 2014, @04:29AM (#66355) Homepage Journal

      Gregarious, popular people tend to continue that trajectory through life, and tend to have easier lives where they use their skills at schmoozing to fit in and glide through life.

      Unpopular teens can become gregarious adults easily enough. And it's only a tiny subset of "popular" people, who can focus their efforts and skills into something marketable in the corporate world. I know plenty of gregarious people, who are barely getting by, some who are long-term homeless. Gregariousness can be a useful skill, but does not preclude other personality traits that may make a person unemployable.

      TFS specifically said popular teens are more likely to become drug-addicted. That often precludes functioning well as adults, no matter how useful your skill of "popularity" may be.

      Unpopular people who can't easily form social bonds tend to have difficult lives with a lot of social insecurity and no support network.

      "can't easily" doesn't mean "impossible". In fact a big pool of casual acquaintances often precludes stronger bonds with fewer people. In addition, "geeks" certainly don't have to be solitary nut-jobs. MtG wouldn't have ever sold a deck, if geeks didn't have friends... even if unpopular friends.

      Seems like I could do a study of everyone I've ever encountered in life and contradict this study all to pieces.

      No, it doesn't seem like you could, at all.

      --
      Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Tork on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:56PM

    by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 08 2014, @03:56PM (#66006)
    I was a geek who loved tinkering with computers. Turns out that's an employable skill.
    --
    🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
    • (Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Tuesday July 08 2014, @06:00PM

      by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 08 2014, @06:00PM (#66085)
      ... why is that funny? Don't you all have jobs finding obscure porn from seedy areas of the net?
      --
      🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
    • (Score: 2) by evilviper on Wednesday July 09 2014, @04:20AM

      by evilviper (1760) on Wednesday July 09 2014, @04:20AM (#66351) Homepage Journal

      I was a geek who loved tinkering with computers. Turns out that's an employable skill.

      Yes, but this study isn't limited to COMPUTER geeks. LARPing, video gaming, and MtG aren't quite such employable skills... And yet.

      --
      Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
      • (Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 09 2014, @04:33AM

        by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 09 2014, @04:33AM (#66357)
        Developing experience and advancing aren't employable skills...?
        --
        🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
        • (Score: 2) by evilviper on Wednesday July 09 2014, @05:12AM

          by evilviper (1760) on Wednesday July 09 2014, @05:12AM (#66362) Homepage Journal

          Developing experience and advancing aren't employable skills...?

          No, certainly not in themselves... ANYBODY and everybody can "develop experience and advance" in SOMETHING. If that "something" isn't valuable to a company, then it's worthless on the job market.

          --
          Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
          • (Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 09 2014, @05:20AM

            by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 09 2014, @05:20AM (#66365)
            When they do it to the point that they're geeks, they've exceeded the rest.
            --
            🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:03PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:03PM (#66009)

    I propose an experimental idea:

    WRT "those standing on the wall or outside the fence" that's only possible in a small school. I was in a 507 person graduating class (no kidding) and to make a long story short in a class that huge you can't be "the" weirdo when there's like 30 weirdos in class with you. You can be one of the social group of weirdos, but can't be on the wall or outside the fence because there's just too many. Being the "only computer kid" might be lonely in a 50 person graduating class in some one room school house in the south, but our after school "computer club" had like 20+ members, enough that we had to share machines at times.

    There is a clique of maybe 50 people who are all into the H.S. reunion and I don't know, or care, about any of them so I don't go. At a 100 person school that would be a little weird to ditch half the class, but at a 500 person school it makes sense. So you're telling me no one from 2nd year physics is going to the reunion, I'd be the first? Ditto 2nd year chemisty/intro to ochem? And I'd also be the only kid from the advanced senior year Calculus to attend? I am so not going. I heard the names and maybe saw them in the hallway but I really don't know anyone who went to the reunion. On one hand not attending makes me an outcast, on the other hand 90% of the graduating class also not attending kind of makes me a conformist, so ...

    So you could probably play games with analysis of outcomes and class sizes. The inability to be an outsider in a huge class means they wouldn't be toughened up by the negative experience, so they'd tend to fail as adults without that toughening. Or something like that.

    I think small class size is a large part of weird social interactions in high school. So you graduate HS and go to university, and hmm, turns out I'm not the only kid in the entire universe who wants to become a chemical engineer. How socially interesting. I don't think I was the only kid in ChemEng to decide F this I'm going to transfer to EE for most of my time and finally graduated CS in that order. I kind of had a gut level feeling I should have started out in CS anyway. What do I want to want to do vs what do I want to do. Started out as a pointer to a pointer, bad design, should have stuck with single depth and just done CS to start with. Probably would have graduated sooner.

    • (Score: 2) by strattitarius on Tuesday July 08 2014, @06:54PM

      by strattitarius (3191) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @06:54PM (#66114) Journal
      I would say your high school experience *shapes* your adult life, but let's be honest... there is nothing like high school outside high school. Small school, big school doesn't matter as much as school vs not-school. Sometimes office politics resembles it, but it's not the same.

      In high school you are forced into a social setting with people. Loose group of 100-500 (the whole class). Looser group of 500-2000 (the whole school). Smaller groups throughout the day in classes. And finally your friends that you *want* to associate with. Other than work, which you have a choice of where and when and how to work (to an extent), there is nothing very close to this.

      It's evident in the "It Gets Better" campaign where they try to teach young LBGT kids that after school, well, it get's better.
      --
      Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 08 2014, @07:41PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 08 2014, @07:41PM (#66145)

        "there is nothing very close to this"

        I thought about your proposal, and the closest analogy I can think of, not being a "church" kinda guy, when I end up in a church none the less, its all people from the area (same socioeconomic level and same race) and vaguely the same age (I'm always like the only non-gray/white haired guy at church, or so it seems) and obviously similar beliefs. And they do a whole heck of a lot of social activities with each other per the little newsletter things. And they gossip a lot, it seems.

        As a point in your favor I admit I've never been so bored at any time in my life than at high school. Come on, get on with this joke and get it out of the way, I got a real life to get started, somewhere other than here, hurry up with this BS...

        "where they try to teach young LBGT kids that after school, well, it get's better."

        Could probably cross out the LBGT and still be correct. Well, except for the people that peaked in high school and are in decline. Oh and the kids that go straight into prison, which school is trying hard to emulate, that probably sucks for them.

    • (Score: 2) by fliptop on Wednesday July 09 2014, @12:31AM

      by fliptop (1666) on Wednesday July 09 2014, @12:31AM (#66275) Journal

      I don't think I was the only kid in ChemEng to decide F this I'm going to transfer to EE for most of my time

      F this? What happened?

      ChemE wasn't my 1st choice, I was originally Environmental until I figured out 2 things: 1) it's basically a Civil degree w/ certain environmental electives like water treatment, air pollution control, etc.; and 2) no one w/ a BS in Environmental was getting decent work (at the time), you needed a MS to do well. So I switched to ChemE and took all the same environmental electives. After graduation it was easy to get a job w/ that combination.

      --
      Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 09 2014, @12:37PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 09 2014, @12:37PM (#66470)

        When I was a kid in my spare time it was ALL electronics and ham radio and mostly computers. But I was introduced to chem and found it very interesting, so I ran with it, after all it was my favorite classes in all of high school. I was good at the theory and excellent in the lab. And it is interesting stuff.

        But like a cheesy hollywood movie, you can't escape your destiny, so I'd go to lecture and think "this is cool" and have an interesting time in lab, and then I'd sit in the dorm, and rather than thinking about chemistry I'd be magnetically glued to my computer fooling around with languages and unix and the internet (this is just barely pre-web era). And I'd go home for break or a weekend and never think of or be remotely interested in chemistry, but its all ham radio, packet radio, AX.25 networking, APRS position reporting, TCPIP, microcontrollers... what fun staying up all night. I could talk all about aldehydes and ketones and the benzene ring pi bond resonance and calculating the performance of pH buffer solutions but left to myself it always drifted to talking about pipelined ALU design and these strange lambda things that LISPs use and this new intel processor supporting this new "protected mode" that sounds almost as useful as the unix boxes at school, oh yeah I'm supposed to be doing chemistry stuff or something on those boxes instead of teaching myself C when I'm supposed to be doing my "fortran for chemeng 101" homework, aren't I?

        Chemistry? Whats that? Oh that's the thing I only think about or do during assigned hours and only at school. I was and pretty much still am, hopelessly electronic / computer addicted. I even considered double majoring, after all someone writes the software for FTIR machines and NMR machines and all the chemeng SCADA stuff and I know perfectly well how they work and also how software works, so the embedded software author may as well be me, but ... so far I have only worked one job in my life that didn't directly involve analog RF and computer software.

        So yeah F chemistry not because I hated it or it hated me, but because I just didn't care anymore.

        Same thing happened in EE, yeah yeah bias some transistors class A, AB, C, common base/emitter/collector have different input and output impedance I did all that stuff by myself at home when I was in like 7th grade building ham radio gear some of which worked, some not so well, now don't bother me with this Norton's theory stuff that I already know anyway, because I'm teaching myself to be a unix sysadmin and I'm trying to self teach myself OO programing. Wait, what the hell am I doing sitting, bored, in "welcome to ohms law and BTW whats a transistor?" class when there's a perfectly good CS lecture being held right next door about polymorphism in OO design and that's exactly what I'm trying to learn on my own today? So bye bye EE hello CS. CS, now that was actually fun.

        I could have saved myself a lot of time, and money, by just going CS at the start and skipping all the transferring.

  • (Score: 1) by ButchDeLoria on Tuesday July 08 2014, @11:51PM

    by ButchDeLoria (583) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @11:51PM (#66252)

    I was mostly an isolated nerd in grade school, got good (As) grades with little effort, and the moment I hit college I just rode my scholarships for a year of vacation after realizing just how much I hated the idea of organized education. I can't tell if I burned out or if there was just never a flame to begin with.

  • (Score: 2) by fliptop on Wednesday July 09 2014, @12:49AM

    by fliptop (1666) on Wednesday July 09 2014, @12:49AM (#66282) Journal

    Really, after reading all these excellent comments, what else could one think?

    My $0.02 on this: I went to an all-boys Catholic high school so I pretty much experienced the opposite. Large graduating class (about 330). The valedictorian, to an outsider, could've been a certified geek as he took all AP classes and graduated w/ a 4.0. But he also lettered in 3 varsity sports. Geek? Jock? He sat w/ the jocks in the lunchroom. He went on to a very prosperous career as a patent attorney and is now (I think) semi-retired at age 48. Saw him at the 25th year reunion. Nice looking wife, too.

    At my school, we really didn't consider anyone but the band to be geeks. And really, they were more dorks than geeks [laughingsquid.com]. This was the early 80's and computers were just getting started, so that's unavailable as a metric to measure by. I guess it's different when you don't have to impress any girls??

    --
    Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 09 2014, @02:31AM

      by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday July 09 2014, @02:31AM (#66318) Journal

      The home computing got started in ~1971 with the Intel 4004 and TI TMS1000. In 1975 The MOS 6502 CPU sold for 25 USD. So home computing was definitely in reach. It just wasn't common. You had to make an effort to get access. There's a difference. In the past brilliance due to exposure depended on effort. Now it's more like everyone uses it but few have brilliance.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 10 2014, @04:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 10 2014, @04:01PM (#67126)

    I'll show them all!