Things to try

I have to say, this was harder to come up with than I expected. Hmmm... I'd like to try living in a different country, to get out of the bubble that America seems to exist in. I'd like to try quilling because it's just absolutely gorgeous and doesn't require many materials (read: quilling tool, plus paper). Quilling is using a little tool to curl up paper and.. ok, you need a picture to appreciate this.

source

See? Beautiful! I'd also like to learn another language, preferably Spanish or French (since I'm hoping to move to Vancouver at some point, the latter would be very helpful). Maybe someday I'd even be willing to run a Dungeons and Dragons game, but I don't think I'm quite ready for that yet, I'm just a player for now :)

Ready, Set, Nerd!

(Very sorry for being late. Better late than never?)

Here's what I bring to the Nerd Off table:

I may have an obsession with River Song from Doctor Who. I realize that some people have been irritated with how much emphasis has been put on her this season, but I'm fascinated by her story and love getting more bits and pieces of it. She may well be my favorite character. Also Doctor Who related, I have a lovely papercraft TARDIS a friend made for me that sits on my desk.

I'm a knitting nerd, both in what I make (I'm currently up to three Jayne hats and a wizard hat), and with my enjoyment of it. I've been known to occasionally look at swatches of stitching for long periods of time, mumbling "it's so pretty."


In more stereotypical nerd-dom, I've been playing D&D for a little over a year now. I've really enjoyed it, and it would be hard for me to go back to playing MMORPGs. I'm not knocking the companionship you can have with people from a guild, but I really like getting to hang out with the people I'm playing with face-to-face (it also makes it much easier to decode meaning since I can see body language and hear tone of voice).

I'm also pretty nerdy with my cooking and baking, especially the latter. I really like figuring out how things work, even if I don't ever end up making them from scratch again, and I've spent pretty significant amounts of time trying to make different sorts of artisan bread and pastry.

As I mentioned in my last post, I also really love reading. Or in a more general sense, I love stories. One of my favorite classes in high school was Advanced Placement U.S. History, because our teacher helped us see it as a story rather than segmented data about people and years. This story came complete with recurring characters and themes, as well as self-referential points as people tried to correct past mistakes (often over-correcting).

As for works of fiction, I just about grew up hanging out in the library and read a good chunk of their books. While I'm not a fan of stories that have a final "gotchya!" moment where something's revealed that no one could have predicted, I do like stories that surprise me. Often when starting a book, within the first chapter or two I usually have an idea of what that story might look like based on similar ones I've read before. When the story mixes it up on me, I'm pleasantly surprised.

And now, for my not-so-nerdy things. For one, I am awful at video games. I like playing them a little at a time, but generally by the time I come back around to play them again I've lost any skill I might've gained and end up back where I started.

My second one needs a little bit of explaining. I realize that there are lots of female nerds and geeks who've put up with clerks at game stores being patronizing and assuming they were buying things for their boyfriend, or only there because of a male. So when, on occasion, I agree to go to a Games Workshop (the people who put out Warhammer) with the guy I'm dating, I always feel a little guilty because I'm living up to that stereotype. Sure, there are things I'm interested in looking at there since they have some interesting models, but I have no inclination to play Warhammer and wouldn't go into that store if it was just me.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

This is an interesting post for me because I use nerd and geek almost interchangeably. Usually the word I use varies by context - if I'm around a Nerdfighter, I tend to use nerd more frequently, and if I'm around someone who aggressively dislikes one of the words, I'll use the word they prefer (i.e. I have a friend who actively rallies against the label of geek, so I use nerd around him).

I agree with the definition of nerd as someone with varied interests and geek as someone with a passion for one subject, with it being possible to be both; under this definition I'd be a nerd, but also a Doctor Who geek.

The funny thing is, that definition is not how I actually use the words. In everyday usage, I completely swap the nerd definition for the geek one, with it being common for nerd to be used in more language focused or mainstream/more accepted areas (i.e. book nerd, Firefly nerd, politics nerd). I tend to use geek in the situations that, even if accepted now, used to be the hallmark of a social outcast or were deemed weird - for instance a Dungeons and Dragons geek, a model painting geek, or a video game geek.

Did any of that make sense? So I say that a nerd is someone with varied interests who probably is more well-read and pursues intelligence, and a geek is someone with a passion. But what I usually end up meaning is that a nerd has a couple of passions but is more accepted for them, while a geek can have one or many hobbies but they're a little more off-the-wall and might get some weird looks for them.

Nerdspotting

My method of differentiating between geeks and nerds is actually very similar to what Sarah wrote yesterday.

Nerds, in my definition, have a wide range of interests.  Nerds are nerds about everything (or a lot of things, at any rate).

Geeks, on the other hand, tend to be more narrowly focused on a certain subject.  Geeks are geeks about specific things.

There is one other criterion that I would like to add.  I associate both nerds and geeks as being, in general, on average, not in every case but fairly often, more introverted as well as more intelligent than non-nerd/geeks.  I would say the introversion applies slightly more to geeks and the intelligence slightly more to nerds.  So, both nerds and geeks have above-average levels of introversion and intelligence, but I think it would be more likely to find an extroverted nerd than an extroverted geek, and more likely to find an average-intelligence geek than an average-intelligence nerd.  Of course, these are clearly blanket statements and not hard and fast rules, but I feel like that is the way it is, in general.

It is possible to be both a nerd and a geek.  You can be a nerd in general, but have specific things that you geek about.

Personally, I am a nerd, but I don't think I'm geek about anything any more (I used to be a geek about both Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, and a really long time ago, about Pokémon, but I've lost my geek-level of interest in any of those things).

Nerds vs. Geeks

So this week we're discussing the differences between nerds and geeks. Personally, I think they're similar but not the same. You can be one, the other or both, it's pretty flexible.

Nerds

To me a nerd has always just been a person who likes to like things. A nerd has a wide variety of interests and isn't bothered to admit it or increase their knowledge, they also wouldn't mind being introduced to anything new.

Geeks

Geeks in my definition are similar to nerds but without the wide variety of interest. When someone is classified as a geek, to me it's that they have a specialized interest. A geek has a subject that they excel in, something they favor more with their enthusiasm.

While I'm a nerd for all sorts of things, especially books (book geeks are also possible), I consider myself a Harry Potter geek because those are honestly my favorite books and I have a habit of trying to see how many small details about the wizarding world I can memorize. I figure geeks also can just go to a certain genre, you can be a sci-fi geek, a mystery geek.

Summary
In summary, nerds are people who like a lot of stuff, like to learn about stuff and are not ashamed of it. Geeks are nerds with specialized interests.

This was short, I'm bothered by how short my nerd paragraph is to my geek paragraph.