quod me nutrit me destruit

I am a nerd

I mean, I don't often think of myself as a nerd...but recently, I've come to realise just how much of a nerd I am. Not in a L337 way, just in a really academic way.

I know I'm reasonably cool. Not painfully hip, but not a granola munching hippy either (and hippies are arguably quite cool).

I guess...I came to this realisation that I can think of more than 5 PhD students offhand (all of whom skipped masters and are freakishly young), and count them as friends. Not acquantainces, but real friends.

And while it all seems pretty common to me, and we all try to rationalise it (there are about 18000 PhD students in Melbourne Uni alone so they say) a PhD is still a pretty rare thing. One may certainly have the brainpower to achieve a PhD, but the drive (read: nerdiness) required to actually go for it only resides in a much rarer breed.

And I think of how many masters students I know, how many honours students, and suddenly the number just doubles.

So here I am, friend of academics. I was hopeless at the whole studying business, but I realise that if marks and papers weren't an issue, I'd love to sit and read. How nerdy can I get? I just want to sit and absorb information.

Last night I spoke to a PhD student I was introduced to by Brydon, another PhD student. Brydon introduced him as "the one stop information shop" and from a PhD student, I reckon that's pretty high praise. Coming from Brydon, himself a repository of anything from "how to germinate warratahs" to "it is technically possible to create a chicken with no head, beak, feet and 4 wings"this was very very high praise indeed.

So I sat there grilling him on really silly questions that no one had been able to answer satisfactorily.

"Why is Naploeon considered the 1st antichrist?"
"What's the entire history of Palestine and Israel?"
"HOW did they decide that there was going to be a Jewish state?"
"Why do they speak Hebrew if the state was kind of formed only 50 years ago and they mainly spoke Yiddish anyway, and Yiddish is now a dead language?"
"You mean Palestine does not technically exist????"
"Why do the French have such a superiority complex? What gives them reason?"
"How exactly is the Taiwanese Paliarment structured?"
"Why is Nostradamus considered seriously?"
"What's the difference between the Howard goverment centre-right and normal centre right?"

and he actually managed to answer it all. AND.

I was actually interested.

WHAT THE HELL. I just sat there absorbing it all in, because I'm actually interested in knowing about France's superiority complex. and exactly how right wing is very right wing.

and it struck me that I AM SUCH A NERD.

The 9 year old who finished Lord of The Rings in 3 days while knocked down with food poisoning, the 8 year old who finished the abridged texts of Shakespeare, the 12 year old who enjoyed reading encyclopedias, and started on dictionaries- but it started to bore her. Tried reading the Chinese classics, but her Chinese was crap, and ancient Chinese is a pain.

My childhood heroine whom I still greatly admire today is XiShi, someone who lived over 2500 years ago, whom I found you guessed it, reading. Climbing on 2 chairs to reach books on ancient Chinese history.

I don't know about you, but if I had a child like me, I'd be freaking out no end. (I blame my upbringing- especially my dad and his nerd friends) I don't want kids like me. And I don't want kids at all actually. But kids like me would have me panicking.

It's just. not. normal.

My nerd roots are showing, and I'm actually alright with that.

posted by sway @ 9:48 PM