Being a “nerd” has exactly one time of year to be cool (or sexy... for some reason) -- Halloween. And those nerds aren’t even real. If you grew up in the years before, oh I don’t know...2 010? it was not cool to be a nerd. Well, that time is over. I would like to officially remove the ban on being nerdy and share with everyone the five steps it takes to become the coolest nerd your friends will ever meet. You will be the life of every party, the talk of the town, and everyone’s best friend. Something about specialized knowledge is just so inherently awesome that you absolutely have to share it with everyone. Gone are the days when “nerd” was an insult. Instead I would like to encourage the much kinder “dingus” to become a thing.
1. Find something to nerd out about.
The whole point of being a nerd is being passionate about something. If you are not passionate about what you want to learn, there's going to be no desire to learn it. There's a difference between being smart and being a nerd; the difference is passion. Whether you love learning about how airplanes work, how to forecast weather, or you just really love Calculus, as long as you're passionate about what you know -- you're doing it right!
2. Understand the difference between good grades and good understanding.
At one point in time, we've all been students and unfortunately, being a life-long learner and being a student don't quite work together. When we learn in a classroom, we can get so focused on: What does my professor want me to know? that we loose sight of what we want to know. If all you've ever done is memorize study guides and regurgitate answers onto a test, I'm sorry but you don't have an understanding of the material, you have good grades. The whole point of being a nerd is being able to share your understanding with other people (sometimes unsuspecting people at a bus stop that are mumbling to themselves that it's raining a lot). If all you have is the fill in the blank knowledge from exams, I guarantee you will not find that blank in the real world and you will have much less opportunity to share your knowledge.
3. Share your knowledge with everyone.
Like I mentioned before, the whole purpose of even having knowledge is to share it with other people. Any other people. On Halloween, the day that Portland got the most rain it's seen in a single day in four years, I was downtown with my sister and we decided to take the bus a couple blocks down the street instead of walking because it was pouring. As we were standing there waiting at the bus stop, I heard the woman in front of us mumbling about how it's not supposed to rain this hard or something like that. Well, super conveniently I had just learned in my climatology class that the rain we were getting was from a Pineapple Express storm and it was because it was coming from Hawaii, and there was high pressure and low pressure and condensation and humidity rates that all had to do with it and I felt the need to share it with this nice woman at the bus stop -- so I did! It was pretty cool, and I think she enjoyed it. The point is, whether or not you want to become a teacher or an educator of any sort -- having knowledge is cool: share it!
4. Get stoked.
Along the same lines as passion, always be stoked to learn and to share your knowledge. The more stoked you are, the more you'll learn and the more you'll share. This summer when I was working at Philmont Scout Ranch, I saw kids learn to identify a flower or two and get stoked that they could point out this flower everywhere they saw it and it was awesome. Nerds by nature cannot sit back and hold onto their knowledge, or just quietly share it with a few people who ask. We must shout it from everywhere! Tell everyone! Being a nerd is cool! Look all these cool things you can know! It's not about having a big ego and showing people how smart you are -- it's about genuinely loving what you're learning and wanting to share it with others. Be stoked!
5. Never stop learning.
The final step in becoming a nerd is to never stop learning. If you're going to graduate or have already graduated, think of it more as a ticket to go exploring. College was the tasting course, you have your whole life to go explore everything they taught you in school and share that knowledge with everyone.
