I don’t even remember when I first started reading, but my parents have boxes full of pictures where I’m sitting in the corner of the room, apart from everyone else, with a book in my hand (and a stuffed animal or doll in the other). In school, my friends and I always pretended we were book characters during recess, whether they were girls from "The Clique" series (suitable for our age) or "Little Women" (definitely not suitable for our age). My birthday gifts consisted almost entirely ofbooks for the first 13 or so years of my life, and my aunts and uncles still revert back to the age-old question every time they see me: “So, what book are you reading now?” And in middle school, during my school’s awards night ceremony, I took home so many awards that people made jokes about how I rigged it.

But I hated every second. I hated that people looked at me and just saw a brain or a walking encyclopedia, someone they could point out to their kids and say, “Be more like her,” when all I wanted was to be more like their own child. I hated that I wasn’t the team basketball star instead, or the lead in the play, or even the pretty, popular girl who danced with boys at middle school dances (curse those days). I saw my future, and it didn’t excite me. Where was the fun in staying in and reading all the time? What was the point of being successful if the pedestal you were put on made you feel alone and unhappy? I felt awful. I was a dork, a loser, a nerd; someone who spent every waking moment of their life “studying.” Or, at least, that’s how I interpreted it then.

So I moved on. I went to high school, I found new friends and new interests, and books fell to the wayside a bit. There was plethora of opportunities to do other things, and I ended up joining the track team, where I met some of my best friends. But through it all, I maintained my GPA and took honors classes. Still a nerd, I was never really “in” with the cool kids despite the small size of my school; I was never invited to their crazy parties, or smoke sessions after school, or after-proms, but the older I got, the more that this pleased me. By the middle of junior year, I had a solid group of friends who had mostly found each other because we were all so silly and nerdy in our own way. We would sit at tables in the library frantically trying to figure out our AP physics homework (I’m still convinced this class was in code because it was that foreign to me) while the rest of our class whittled away at their Chem books, or skipped study hall altogether. During our free periods, we would visit our favorite teachers and on senior skip day, you can bet we were all still there.

I still remember when four of us got together to write and record a video for our history class, in which Lao Tzu, Machiavelli, Benjamin Franklin and Confucius faced off in what we proclaim as the world’s “most epic rap battle” to the tune of 2 Chainz “I’m Different,” complete with costumes. Probably, hands down, the nerdiest thing I’ve ever done, our class loved it and we still watch it today, three years later, and laugh hysterically. Not to mention that it's probably the last time I will ever perform a rap battle, and definitely the last time I will refer to Ben Franklin as "Grandpa" while telling him to "go on, go fly your little kite."

(Yes, I am wearing a sheet. Costume game strong.)

And after high school, I enrolled in the honors program at my college too, and I am still undoubtedly growing nerdier as the years go on, picking up books at a hungry pace yet again, and reading everything for class (guess I’m that person). Because looking back on my teenage years, I now clearly see that being a nerd is how some of my closest friendships blossomed, it’s the reason I’m sitting in the library of my beautiful college now, it's the reason I was able to study abroad at a university my school doesn't typically offer as an option, and it’s the reason I refuse to settle for the bullsh*t people try to throw my way. Being a nerd doesn’t mean that your life is limited to the confines of the pages in a book, it just means that you’re more aware of the wonders of the world, you’re more curious. You demand answers and explanations, but at the same time you revere and understand the importance of the make-believe world in books and movies. You know how important the little details are, and your life is enriched with all the things you've read, seen, or done.

I used to think my nerdiness would be the source of my exclusion, but I now see it as the primary reason that I’m so involved, and open to meeting so many different people. My favorite days are the days when I meet someone just as nerdy as me, just as excited about something the general public might ignore or simply label as boring, or brimming with enthusiasm about a book they just read, a code they just cracked, a game they just beat, and so on and so forth.

One of my friends wrote her college essay about how she was this quiet, studious girl secretly obsessed with rap, and she’s now studying engineering at one of the best tech schools in the nation. Another former cool girl is already in grad school for pharmacy after she traded her spot in the revered high school popular kid group to joke around with us dorks, and another one picked up Arabic a mere two years before venturing off to Jordan for a semester -- the very same girl whose cultural knowledge and sense of humor have always made me think she’d be perfect for SNL. And me? Well, when I’m not reading books for fun or referencing Lord of the Rings with anyone who’ll join in, I’m doing pretty much your standard 20-year-old nerd things, and loving every second.

But because I do love a bit of John Green wisdom, I’ll leave you with a quote from a man who summed up the beautiful, sacred thing that is nerdiness in one stint:

“Nerds, like us, are allowed to be ironically enthusiastic about stuff. Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-your-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. When people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘You like stuff.’ Which is not a good insult at all. Like, you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness.”