• Question: When you were at school, did you ever get picked on for being 'nerdy' because you liked science?

    Asked by anon-187184 to Stewart, Miriam, Laura, Kathryn, David on 14 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: David Ho

      David Ho answered on 14 Nov 2018:

      Not that I can remember at all, to be honest. I was quite ‘nerdy’ and worked hard at my studies, but I always found that I had lots of friends and nobody gave me a hard time for it. Which I’m very thankful for, because it meant that I wasn’t discouraged from learning more about the things that I was interested in, and that definitely helped me get where I am today.

    • Photo: Stewart Martin-Haugh

      Stewart Martin-Haugh answered on 14 Nov 2018:

      Definitely. I was also quite awkward and had a few niche interests – until the age of 13 I also did classical ballet. Of course, if people make fun of you for this sort of thing it’s a clear sign you shouldn’t be friends with them, but at school you still have to see them all the time.

      At sixth form and then university I made a lot of friends who just didn’t care about the idea of being nerdy. As you go through life people care about these things less and less. I also remember music taste being a big deal, and now I find that I just listen to what I want and don’t care what other people think.

    • Photo: Miriam Hogg

      Miriam Hogg answered on 14 Nov 2018:

      I was never picked on for being nerdy, I was picked on for being shy and not being ‘girly’.

      I was in the higher sets at school so most of the students were pretty smart, and there were a few students that were amazingly smart so in comparison I didn’t really look ‘nerdy’. The very smart students did get picked on occasionally but most of them didn’t really seem to care, they were just friends with each other and enjoyed themselves.

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