To Be a Geek

Recently, curiosity drove me to look the work “geek” up on Wikipedia. What I found ranged from “A derogatory reference to a person obsessed with intellectual pursuits for their own sake, who is also deficient in most other human attributes so as to impair the person's smooth operation within society“  to “a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts […] In some cases, its performance included biting the head off a live chicken”.

Well. I blinked a few times, stared at the screen, and then, just to be sure, I decided to peek into the mirror – nope, no carnival performer. And no headless chicken, either. I also checked my mental calendar – two planned outings with friends in the next few days. I can also walk, prepare my own food, I shower regularly and can communicate very efficiently in two, moderately efficiently in one, and barely in one other language. That definitely kicked the “deficient in most other human attributes”

I still considered myself to be a geek. And I refused to accept defeat because I was able to function in a modern society, or was not biting the heads off live chickens.   

But by then I had to admit to myself that it was probably rather difficult to define the word “geek”, a slang term, one which has no proper, universal definition yet. And that maybe everyone  has their own definition.

I scrolled down a bit, and found the following:

“It [the word geek] is taken to be someone who is an enthusiast, often in things outside of the mainstream spectrum. It may also describe immersion in a particular mainstream interest to an extreme that is beyond normalcy”

I liked what I read. I re-read it. And I still liked it. It was almost like someone had taken a look inside my head, and then written these 36 words to define it. My inner geekiness.

During my entire childhood I have had an absolutely unhealthy obsession with reading. I suppose many children like to read, but in my case, my mother had to step in and take away my books so I would go to sleep or actually do my homework. (Not that I disliked school, but for my eleven year old self, Latin translations ranked far below reading fantasy – even though I did get more interested in them once the stories we translated became a little more complex).

When I was ten, I developed a similar fascination with ancient, high civilized cultures, especially their religions and myths. I devoured books on them, I begged my parents to go to museums during holidays where we visited other cities, and when I was 14, I was ecstatic when we visited the remains of an ancient city in Sicily, at 40° Celsius, instead of spending time at the beach. When I was eight, I read Sophie’s World in a matter of days.

And I am fascinated by physics, even though I sometimes despair over it, and even though my mathematic skills are nothing compared to that of some of my friends. But I absolutely loved how both can be used to explain our world, to put (most) of it into neat, pretty equations, and the only thing I find more interesting are the still unsolved mysteries in this field.

I don’t want to brag here. I don’t. I really don’t. I don’t want to justify calling myself a geek, or be one of those girls who think that it is cute or sexy to call themselves a geek.

I do want, however, to clarify that I don’t think that it is necessary to be a brilliant genius in order to be a geek, or vice versa.

I am not uber-intelligent. I can’t program computers (even though I plan on learning it) and I can’t solve a complex probability problem just by staring at it for two minutes.

I know someone who can, though. Probably the smartest person I have ever met, a guy who is getting a predicted 84% without studying, who can do exponential equations in his head and who I’ve met on my way to school once. After a wild night, and with no idea where his school-bag was, and some crazy story about waking up on a roof, alone, and with no recollection about how he got there.

I don’t think anyone would consider him a geek. A genius, yes. But not a geek.

And similarly, no one would call me a genius.

But on several occasions, often when I start resembling a pre-pubescent girl during a Justin Bieber concert because of something truly amazing I just learned in physics class, my friends (whom I usually  share the aforementioned “truly amazing” thing with the second I see them), have called me a geek.