The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [131]
Eli grinned. Sometimes it was fun to be a nerd.
After school the next day, Eli approached his locker to retrieve his books. Three students Eli identified as “ghetto people,” wearing baggy pants and chains, were standing at a nearby locker, blocking Eli’s way.
“Excuse me,” Eli said to the student directly in front of his locker. The student did nothing.
“Excuse me,” Eli repeated.
“Dude,” said another boy. “Move out of his way.”
“Oh, sorry,” the first kid said. He stepped forward only slightly, his backpack still obstructing Eli’s access.
Eli had to stand to the side of his locker, and could open it only partially. As he tried to maneuver his books out of the narrow crack, he heard the third student say to the first, “Why are you standing so close to me?”
“That kid’s at his locker.”
The third student lowered his voice. “Who cares? Look at him, he’s a nerd.”
“I know, but . . .” Eli missed the end of the conversation as the group walked away.
Eli sighed. Okay, you’re ghetto, I’ll leave you alone; I’m a nerd, leave me alone, he thought. Why can’t we just stay in our own separate spheres?
At the next Academic Bowl practice, Eli managed to run the entire National Parks category (prompting a teammate to say, “Do you just spend all your time staring at maps or something?”). But he wasn’t as quick as usual, and neither was the rest of the team. When they missed a few easy questions, the coach jumped out of his chair and shouted, “What is wrong with you guys?! You laugh now, but just wait ’til we get our asses kicked by Arrington.” Arrington had won several championships. “They practice five days a week, and after I said some things to their coach after the first round”—which Eli’s team had won—“do you think they’re going to let us get off easy? You guys have got to get faster on the buzzers and stop missing easy questions. I’m not losing to Arrington. They’re from the freakin’ ghetto.”
As the rest of the students tried to stifle their laughter, Eli listened somberly to his coach’s warning about the upcoming final round.
The following night, Eli’s mother asked him, “Why don’t you get some friends together and go see a movie or something this weekend?” At his look, she added, “I just thought you’d want to get out and do something on the weekend.”
“Okay, I’ll think about it.”
“Well, you say that all the time. I talked to Dad and he also says you never go out on the weekends.”
“Okay, just please leave me alone then.”
That night, he emailed a friend, “I’m both excited and nervous for college, but does that necessarily mean big changes? There is just so much I want to do—skydive, travel the world, run a marathon—but is [this] the beginning of these dreams or just the beginning of a lifelong realization that maybe everything isn’t as I expect it to be? Will moving to the other side of the country really open me up to people? What will I do if I don’t make friends? The more I think about it, the more doubt, uncertainty, and more than anything else, loneliness, plagues me. As depressing as that sounds, I’m still gonna go into all this with an optimistic outlook. There is still a teeny-tiny part of my soul holding on and thinking the best is yet to come. But right now, with a zero social life, depressing family situation, mounds of schoolwork, and questioning who I am, I’m just doing all that I can to keep pushing on.”
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WHY STUDENTS EXCLUDE
Experts attribute exclusion to a fundamental concept. As Duke University psychology professor John Coie has said, “The dynamics of group life require that someone be rejected.” You can’t have positive space without negative space to define its outlines. You can’t crown a winner without others to defeat. This idea isn’t new. Emile Durkheim, a prominent sociologist at the turn of the twentieth century, theorized that society needs “deviants” in order to define the boundaries of normality. Social psychologists tell us that deviant group members are those who stray from prevailing group norms. A group might assume that alienating these nonconformists will lead to a more cohesive