When we hear the word nerd, we automatically think of a socially awkward individual or group of individuals whom are very intelligent. Socially awkward is a sense that an individual might have friends, but he or she is unsure when it comes to talking to people he or she might not necessarily know or people whom they feel intimidated by. In society today, an intelligent person is not considered a nerd unless he or she is unsure about how to interact with other people. Movies and television shows present a nerd as person who is obsessed with video games, very intelligent, and unsure about what he or she wants to do with his or her life. For someone to be thought of as a nerd, he or she is considered to be highly intelligent and socially awkward. …show more content…
An average person may wonder may wonder how someone could become so intelligent. Well the answer is that nerds tend to study very often. They are constantly studying, doing homework, or inventing things. As a nerd starts to progress through life, his or her intelligence grows over time because he or she is constantly trying to find a new invention for the world to see or trying to become more intelligent than the other person. Nerds never stop studying, and focusing on a task they are trying to obtain. In a sense they never give up. A few people in the world are considered to be born with the gene of intelligence, which means they do not have to spend their time in the library or constantly study to make good grades. Those few people are not considered to be nerds. They do not necessarily have to work for their knowledge, so they have time to make friends and learn how to interact with other people. Nerds work to obtain the knowledge they desire,which leaves them without much time to learn how to interact with …show more content…
To shorten the definition up, it means someone who is socially awkward. In our world today, we see a nerd as a person who wears glasses or dresses like an eighty year old man, and someone who is unsure about how to participate socially. When interacting with other people, a person with a high intelligence tends to struggle because he or she tends to talk about topics that may not be interesting to whom he or she is talking to. Nerds would much rather be at home studying for a math test on Monday instead of going to a high school football game on a Friday night. Today’s society, tends to think it is uncommon for someone to rather study than go watch football. Nerds are, in a sense, scared to be seen in public. They are insecure about being seen around town because they are unsure on how to carry a conversation with someone who may approach them. A nerd is someone who is considered highly intelligent and socially awkward. Nerds are presented as people who like the play many video games, who knows information about anything in the world, and who is unsure about what to do with the rest of their life. Although nerds make good grades in many aspects on life, being social is not one of them. Nerds are unsure about how to interact with people in a social
Author and Harvard graduate, Leonid Fridman, in an excerpt of his article, America Needs Its Nerds, points out America’s anti-intellectualism. Fridman’s purpose is to inform the reader of the contempt held for the intellectually curious and call for a change in the country’s attitude. He adopts a condemning tone to make the reader aware of the issue and encourage them to change their mindset.
For a majority of children, their role model is their favorite celebrity. These celebrities tend to be athletes, or musicians. Several gifted children admire people who are not as famous, such as famous scientists, authors, or artists. While an intellectual child may be a fan of a celebrity, they may not look up to them in the same way other students would. “Certainly the image presented by modern celebrities suggests that intellectualism has no ties to success and social legitimacy,” which explains how celebrities are practically promoting anti-intellectualism (Penrod, 755). Other students will likely find intellectuals’ role models strange and will tease both the role models and the intellectual children, which decreases their reputation with the intellectuals. Nobody wants to be friends with someone who mocks their role model. When everybody is making fun of an intellectual’s role model, the chances of an intellectual socializing are slim for his ir her feelings are hurt. If the people setting examples were intellectuals, the anti-intellectual movement would probably be different, but as of now, the only way for gifted people to be popular is to change the world with whatever they do best. Changing the world sounds much harder when an intellectual student does not have
Leonid Fridman’s article,”America Need Its Nerds”, published in the New York Times, conveys American society’s unpleasant perception towards intellectuals. Fridman asserts the issues of American society's evaluation of people in order to convince readers of the New York Times to acknowledge educated individuals. He employs logos, ethos, and pathos to contribute to his goal if the readers of the New York Times recognizing the value of intellectuals.
Every person has their own definition of what street smarts means to them. To me, however, having “street smarts” means having the common sense to recognize what to do whenever faced with a problem. Street smarts come from our life experiences. Not only do street smarts come from what we encounter every day, but they also occur through the principles, morals and wisdom passed from generation to generation by our parents, teachers and role models. Street smarts allow a person to meet and overcome a variety of obstacles in the world. Quite the opposite, "book smarts" have virtually a wide-ranging definition. Being book smart suggests an individual is well-informed when it comes to understanding calculations, numbers, academics, etc. Typically, book smart people do well on tests, understand subjects very well, and almost always have their noses stuck inside of a book. I think every person ought to have a fair amount of each quality, if they want to succeed in the world today. In his essay titled “The Purpose of Education”, Martin Luther King sum up my arg...
So what exactly is a sociopath and how can you identify one? Sociopathy is a psychological abnormality where a person exhibits a complete lack of empathy, guilt, and impulsive behavior. They can be very anti-social, or social, depending on the person. Sociopaths have a number of
In paragraphs 1-4 Fridman established the purpose of the piece through his biased assessment of the “nerd” situation in America. He delivered this with a peeved--almost resigned--tone that highlighted the grievousness of their predicament. Statements like, “...a society that only has derogatory terms like nerd and geek for the intellectually curious and academically serious,” were made to make the “nerds and geeks” seem like the innocent prey, getting picked on by the world. This tactic established the way that nerds are perceived, and cause the audience to feel empathetic towards Fridman’s cause. He then continues on to discuss all the instances in which the academically inclined folk are ostracized in polite society. Throughout all of this, Fridman keeps his tone obviously biased, but still composed. This
People can achieve intelligent by learning or by following their passion in whatever they love. If someone loves fixing cars there is a chance he will become a mechanic, so he will be intelligent in that careers. That is how someone becomes intelligent because they learned everything they can about their profession in book or by what they learn on the streets. To become a intelligent person is important in society because that sets a standard for us and we try to learn everything we can to be the best in our jobs and careers, so we can be the best in our field.
American culture has evolved, and Society tends to ostracize people for their intelligence, and our culture has been giving these intellectuals derogatory names like nerd and geek. Leonid Fridman believes that these anti- intellectual values that pervade our society must be fought and should stop for the sake of America. The author supports this position in the passage “America Needs It’s Nerds” through the use of rhetoric by giving definitions of terms such as geek, offering comparisons through juxtaposition, adding a tone shift, and posing rhetorical questions to the reader.
What would changing the definition of nerd do to anyone? First, the general definition of being a nerd has been engraved in everybody’s brains. This definition has the image is a white skinny boy with glasses and doesn't play sports. This boy usually hangs out by themselves or with other nerds. There are real people that are like this in the world and that definition directly affects their life. All the movies and TV shows out there that
One of the major misconceptions unfairly given to our teenagers is that the world owes them. Stepping into life thinking that a cushy lifestyle, 50,000 dollar a year job, and a house will be handed to them strictly because they are "cool" is setting the future of our country up for a huge pitfall. After all, being "cool" in high school afforded them a great deal. This idea keeps our teens from striving to become all they can be on their own. They are then left in their mid-twenties with little to no education, no skills, and extremely unhappy because everything taught to them growing up is now proving to be blatantly wrong. Realizing that being popular doesn't get the same response any more can be devastating. So we now end up with a generation that has spent precious learning years working on popularity, instead of developing skills and gaining knowledge. Our teenagers need to know that they can become, and should strive to be, whatever is in their hearts to be. Then, and only then will we produce an educated society who can earn the lifestyle that they so desire.
Sociopaths are socially awkward. They do not establish any form of relationship with others and doesn’t care about other
Penrod says that intellectuals have a negative name associated with them that can also give them a bad reputation. The name “geek” or “nerd” is not a positive one for the intellectuals and makes them feel devalued. An online venter describes what he hears “A+ this and…got a 1600 on my SAT and got all AP classes next year woohoo. That’s all these people care about don’t they have lives damn nerds” (Penrod). Even though the venter seems to be angry towards the end his anger shows something bigger. He is somewhat envious of the grades, SAT scores, and classes these kids get because they’re intellectuals. All of those factors together that he
Sociopaths are people with a major personality disorder and they possess sociopathic characteristics of being tremendously antisocial and they have no conscience. They react on impulses and they usually fail to plan ahead. Sometimes a sociopath often believes that they are doing nothing wrong or when they are do terrible things they believe that they’re doing something that’s good or acceptable. This definition may fall a bit short because of the simple fact that one will truly never understand what a sociopath really is, or what they think, unless you’re one yourself. This is because of the many characteristics that a sociopath have. Not all sociopaths are good people, but the same thing could be said that, not all sociopaths are bad people.
Street smart students are much smarter than book smart students because of their knowledge and experiences. Author states in the article “I believe that street smarts beat out book smarts in our culture not because street smarts are nonintellectual, as we generally suppose, but because they satisfy an intellectual thirst more thoroughly than school culture, which seems pale and unreal,” which means that street smart students are smarter than book smart students because of their vast amount of information about many things and previous experiences. Author is right about his point that street smart students get more out of their mistakes and learn more from their previous experiences. According to author, street smart students always try to learn from their mistakes where book smart students rely on the books and information from the studies. Book smart students never try to experience the situation of an issue, which gives them biased information and they don’t learn much, where street smart students experience the situation of an issue and learn much more than book smarts. Book smart students are also smart because they learn a lot of information from books and readings also they know how to use that information properly to succeed in academic area, but these students learn very much less from their mistakes and previous experiences to succeed, than street smart students.
The second group, known campus-wide, is the nerds because they are obsessed with books, constantly studying and learning about their interests. The nerds are usually annoying with their obnoxious laughter regarding a really stupid joke. The nerds wear a nice shirt with a bow tie, or a tie and a nicely ironed dress pants and always has a pocket protector to prevent ink stains from their pens. The nerd spends their school night with a tight schedule for recreation, school homework, and learning new things that captures their interests. Computer programming, calculator programming, the biology of their pet frog are some of the common things that interests the nerds.