The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School

by Alexandra Robbins

  For the first time in recent memory, Eli’s school was an Academic Bowl contender. Strattville won a fall match against four other schools, one of which was a perennially dominant team. Eli’s team advanced to the tournament’s final round, which would take place in April.

  In classes, Eli tried to avoid appearing like a know-it-all, but sometimes his teachers made it difficult for him to do so. With a few exceptions, either they seemed to look down on him because he was so clearly unpopular, or they treated him as if he were superior because he was a straight-A student.

  Sometimes classmates came to their own conclusions. Recently, Eli had decided to read a Spanish novel for fun. Several students—and two teachers—wondered aloud why he was reading in Spanish when he didn’t have to. He was poring over it in physics one day when an Academic Bowl teammate said, “Wait, is that book in Spanish?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have to read it or something?”

  “No, it’s just for fun.”

  “Nerd!”

  In Chinese, the teacher passed out grade reports. Immediately, students asked Eli how he did. “I’m not going to tell you,” he said, shoving the paper into his binder without looking at it. A few students tried to pry the paper out, but Eli stuffed the binder into his backpack.

  “Come on, what’d you get?” someone prodded.

  “I bet it was a ninety-nine,” someone else chimed in.

  Eli didn’t respond.

  “A hundred?”

  Eli busied himself with math homework. On the one hand, he was mildly amused that he had this power over his classmates; he had something they wanted. That didn’t happen very often. On the other hand, he wished they would leave him alone. Except with close friends, Eli mostly preferred “brief, impersonal conversation.”

  “Come on, just tell us.”

  “C,” Eli said.

  “You’re lying.”

  “D,” Eli answered. “F.”

  “Come on!”

  “B-, B, B+, A-, A.”

  “Okay, now I believe you.”

  “A+, C+, D+, E.”

  “Why don’t you just tell us?”

  “It’s not relevant,” Eli said.

  He was sure nothing good could come out of answering truthfully. Increasingly, students were also bugging Eli about where he planned to apply to college. He wasn’t offended that they asked, but he was wary about sharing that information. If he named some of his choices, he knew people would ask him why he wasn’t applying to, say, Harvard. If he named the more prestigious schools on his list, he was afraid they would think he was a snob. Usually, Eli answered honestly: “I want to go as far away from here as possible.”

  Students looked at him strangely when he said that. “Why?!” they asked.

  “Because I hate it here,” Eli would answer, and left it at that. He never told anyone the schools on his list besides Westcoast University—Berkeley, UNC-Chapel Hill, William and Mary, and Wake Forest among them.

  Eli hoped classmates didn’t interpret his answer to mean that he didn’t like them. “That’s not necessarily true,” he later explained. “I know everyone always talks about how senior year is ‘the greatest year of your life,’ but I just want to get through it as quickly as possible.”

  After school, Eli looked at his Chinese grade report. He had earned a 101.

  REGAN, GEORGIA | THE WEIRD GIRL

  In first period, Regan heard a guy say, “Man, you such a faggot.”

  Regan was so incensed that her hands quavered. She hated that word. It didn’t matter that no one in the room knew she was gay. “What did you just call him?!”

  The student repeated himself.

  “Pick a different word,” Regan said. He did.

  “What’s wrong with that word?” another student asked.

  Regan was fed up with the ignorance of people at Johnson. She had heard them use that word—and “That’s gay” as an insult—too often. “Let me tell you a little story. Back in the day, they used to burn witches. You know that, right? Have you also heard that ‘faggot’ really means ‘a bundle of sticks’? See, when women were being burned at the stake for witchcraft, sometimes law officials and townspeople would round up the gay men and women and use them as faggots to light the stake. So when you call someone a faggot, you’re saying that person deserves to be burned alive. So stop.”

  Her explanation caused an uproar. “The Bible says it’s wrong, so it’s wrong,” a guy said. Another student stood up and gave him a high five.

  “The Bible also says not to eat shrimp, so I hope you don’t like seafood,” Regan retorted, still trembling with anger.

  “If someone a faggot, he a faggot,” the high-fiver said. “S’okay to call someone out on what they is.”

  “That means I can call you the N-word then, right?” Regan asked.

  “Well, you could, but then me and you is gonna have a problem.”

  “But that’s just calling you out on what you are, isn’t it?” she pressed. Regan was glad she stood up for herself, but as class began, the discussion ebbed without resolution.

  Regan felt better during second period, when her class finished reading Oedipus the King, one of her favorites. Even though she knew the end lines by heart, she still got what she called “literary chills” when, once Oedipus finally sees the truth, he is blind.

  But the homophobic slur stuck with her throughout the day. Outside of school, Regan’s friends, family, and theater castmates were wholly supportive of her and her sexuality. Inside school, where she spent most of her waking hours, she hated having to hide her gayness. Regan regularly volunteered at a local LGBT youth center, which was a bright spot in her life. The stories of the kids at the center sometimes broke her heart.

  When Regan vented to Crystal, who had come out only recently, how much it crushed her that gay people didn’t have the same rights as heteros, Crystal asked, “Is there anyone fighting for those rights?”

  “Well, yeah, of course there are people fighting,” Regan replied. “The Human Rights Campaign, for instance. I donate to them. And gay people have marches, petitions, sit-ins, and things like that. They say gay is the new black. And it is. It’s the new civil rights movement.”

  Regan later explained, “Being gay sucks because you’re forced into silence. People assume that straight people fall in love and gay people have sex. Even my mother says, ‘I don’t understand why gay people have to come out. It’s none of anyone’s business what you do in bed,’ as if being gay is a fetish or something and only pertains to the bedroom. It’s hard to be gay at school mostly because I don’t want to lie.” She tried never to lie.

  Regan didn’t have the energy to constantly battle homophobia. One day she was dawdling in a classroom while her friend Josiah discussed video games with an assistant principal. Regan sighed dramatically a few times, bored because the topic precluded her from participating in the conversation.

  Finally the administrator said facetiously, “Well, let’s talk about something that Davis can talk about. Let’s see, what kind of muffins do you like? You seem like the kind of girl who would like muffins.” He smirked at her. He knew about Crystal. Regan laughed awkwardly.

  The administrator turned to Josiah and said, “What, what? Is ‘muffin’ a code word for something that I’m unaware of? Am I going to lose my job?”

  “Noo, nope, noo,” Josiah replied sarcastically.

  After the administrator left the room, Regan said to Josiah, “I was tempted to say, ‘Chocolate.’ ”

  A few weeks later, the boy who had uttered the word “faggot” approached Regan. He told her that he was gaming online and someone typed, “You’re a fag.” The boy grinned. “Man, I was about to type it back and everything, but then I remembered you told me not to say that word, so I didn’t. I called him a bastard instead.”

  Regan smiled to herself. The victory was small, but it was a victory nonetheless.

  WHEN THE FIRST FACEBOOK message came in, Regan laughed
it off. “Oh my God,” she said. Crystal, who was hanging out in the kitchen, looked up.

  “You won’t believe this,” Regan said. “You know my friend Theodore at school? He sent me a message: ‘Funny story . . . well, maybe not! I totally called your archenemy Mandy your name! She was PISSED.’ ”

  As soon as Regan got to school the next morning, she found Theodore in the art room. “So . . . what?” she asked.

  “It was ridiculous,” Theodore said.

  Tess, a mutual acquaintance, walked into the room. “Oh, are you telling her about Mandy?” she asked, looking thrilled to be part of the gossip. Her eyes widened. “It was unbelievable. I walked in after the whole thing happened, and she was still yelling and ranting, her hands flying all over the place. I was like, ‘What the hell happened?’ When I heard it, I couldn’t even believe it.”

  “Okay, what happened?” Regan asked.

  “First of all,” Theodore started, “I didn’t even know about the Wyatt thing. I wasn’t even aware that she—”

  Tess broke in: “When he told me he called her your name, I was like, ‘Do you know what you just did?’ I had to explain the whole thing to him.” Apparently Mandy had acted as if Theodore obviously should have known about the Mandy-Wyatt-Regan triangle.

  “I saw her sitting in the auditorium,” Theodore said. “And all I saw was blonde, curly hair.” Regan had recently dyed her hair blonde.

  “Oh!” Regan said. “She was sitting? Thank God. I thought she was standing up, and I was like, ‘Oh no, you did not mistake her ass for mine.’ ”

  “No, no,” Theodore laughed. “So I went up to her, and I was like, ‘Hey buddy, haven’t seen you in a minute.’ She turned around and gave me the look of death. I was like, ‘Oh, sorry, I thought you were Davis.’ And then white girl got ghetto. I mean ghetto. She was putting her neck into it and everything, snapping and all. She was like, ‘Don’t ever make that mistake again! I am not that bitch. I am not that lesbian. I am not annoying.’ She went on and on!”

  “She called me annoying? And a bitch? What have I ever done to her?”

  Theodore went on. “Then she just started going off. Screaming. Yelling. Francesca was trying to get Mandy to calm down, but she was flipping out. She was so loud that people in other rows were turning around. I was like, ‘I don’t even know you,’ you know?”

  Regan fumed. “That is the most unprofessional thing I have ever heard in my life. And why did she call me out on being gay? That has nothing to do with her, and it has even less to do with why she hates me!”

  “She’s just pissed because she got your sloppy seconds,” Tess said.

  “Yeah,” said Theodore. “Clearly she’s just jealous.”

  “But she shouldn’t be!” Regan yelled. “If anyone should hate anyone, I should hate her. She’s the one who stole my boyfriend! But I don’t hate her! I mean, I don’t like her. But I certainly don’t hate her or talk trash about her. I can’t believe it. Part of me wants to say something to her.” She rolled her eyes. “I’ve gotta get to class,” she said, glancing at the clock. “But thanks for the story.”

  Regan was more frustrated than deeply offended. “I’m completely blown away,” she said later. “I’m aggravated that someone would be that rude and inconsiderate. Not to mention, I thought we were over that. So that puts me on edge because that means there’s someone in close proximity to me who considers me an enemy. And I think it’s unfair that I should have to feel uncomfortable at my job. It amazes me to no end how immature and ridiculous people act—especially grown people. You would think that someone in her thirties would have a little more sense than a typical teenager.”

  Mandy wasn’t a typical teenager. Neither was Regan. Or Wyatt, Theodore, or Tess. All of them were James Johnson teachers. At twenty-four, Regan, an English teacher, might have been the youngest of the bunch, but she was experienced enough to realize that the same school setting that stifled unique students could make teachers feel badly about being cafeteria fringe too.

  ______

  TEACHER CLIQUES

  All of the James Johnson characters in Regan’s story—Wyatt, an English teacher; Mandy and Francesca, history teachers; even the couple that hooked up in the parking lot—are teachers or administrators, unless I specifically identified them as students.

  In too many ways, the Johnson staff adopted the same behaviors that schools often disapprove of in their students. Teachers were cliquey, and divided by department and race, a practice the administration did not discourage. In fact, at the staff assembly on the first day of school, the principal told the teachers to sit with their department and to come up with a name for their group. (Before Regan and her colleagues even pulled their chairs together to discuss it, the African-American English teachers had already decided on the name of a black celebrity.)

  Teachers gossiped about each other on a daily basis—and, worse, they gossiped about students. One teacher asked Regan whether she taught a particular student; when Regan said she did, the teacher sniped, “She’s a cunt.” Regan said to me, “Being a high school teacher is the same as being a high school student. Teachers act just as badly as the students do.”

  As a reporter, I was surprised to learn that some of the adults who are supposed to be role models, mentors, and above all, educators openly form exclusive cliques themselves. With names.

  Several teachers hailing from an Illinois junior high school, for example, told me about the ruling clique there. The group called itself the PIGS, for People In Good Standing. They invited certain teachers—young, good-looking, fun, outgoing, “usually the cheerleader or good-old-boy types”—to a social event or two, and would let them know if they had “PIGS potential.” If they didn’t make the cut, the PIGS no longer invited them to happy hours, weekend outings, or school-event after-parties that they discussed in front of uninvited teachers.

  When the PIGS got together outside of school, they apparently spent much of their time making fun of other teachers and playing drinking games. In school, they were worse. They ostracized non-PIGS, sometimes calling them derogatory names or turning other colleagues against them. When an older teacher’s beloved dog died, they stole a photo of the dog and built a mock shrine to it, pretending to mourn. They persuaded the principal to place a teacher on remediation, a probationary process for low-quality teachers, during her last year before retirement because they claimed she wasn’t working collaboratively with some of the PIGS members. The devastated teacher, who had worked for the district for thirty-five years, had won several awards for her teaching. A non-PIGS teacher explained how the PIGS made her feel. “I remember thinking that this is how I felt in high school. It was so strange to get those feelings again, self-conscious, unsure of myself, flawed,” she said. “Then I was angry. I should not be feeling this way. I’m an adult, a professional, someone who teaches children to not feel this way.”

  Barb, one of the teachers whom the PIGS often berated, left the school because the PIGS’ behavior affected the services the school was supposed to provide to students. As the “at risk” teacher, Barb worked with all of the teachers to help struggling students. She relied on the other teachers’ lesson plans and materials to teach study strategies to the students. When the PIGS took over the eighth-grade team, the team stopped providing Barb with copies of tests and quizzes. She confronted the teachers during a meeting to ask why they had suddenly stopped furnishing these essential materials. The team didn’t respond. After the meeting, sixth- and seventh-grade teachers who were PIGS also stopped providing materials to Barb. The principal, who was chummy with the PIGS, refused to intervene. “It was the most disturbing thing I ever saw professionally,” Barb said. “If you were not a part of their clique, they didn’t help you, which meant you might struggle with a student who was at risk of failing. Some of the cliquey teachers would go as far as to exaggerate stories about you so that you felt isolated by the remainder of your peers, causing some teachers to quit education altogether or retreat
into their classrooms where they eventually burnt out.”

  High school, middle school, and elementary school staff around the country described the ways colleagues’ behavior mirrored that of the popular students. Evan, a teacher who founded the first Gay-Straight Alliance in Texas, annually organizes a Day of Silence at his magnet school, during which participating students do not speak in “recognition of the silence many LGBT suffer in keeping their sexual orientation hidden.” Even though the Day of Silence is a school-wide event approved by the principal, other administrators and teachers openly have called it “Stupid Gay Day” and have emailed Evan protests expressing disgust about “your gay group.”

  Teachers in various states described cliques divided by religion, race, and/or seniority. A Minnesota teacher said, “The labels are the ‘veterans’ and the ‘young staff,’ and the veterans really let you know that you’re not a veteran teacher and that as a young teacher you should know your place until you put in your years.”

  Because of these divisions, teachers can come to dread the faculty lounge—which one teacher called “the lion’s den”—just as much as students might dread the cafeteria. Eliza, who quit teaching partly because of teacher clique behavior, said that some teacher cliques at her Virginia school didn’t allow certain people to sit with them at lunch. “There were the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots.’ If the table went silent when you sat down, they didn’t like you, and made it clear you were not welcome. I felt like I was on a season of Survivor. I didn’t know who I could trust,” Eliza said. Disheartened, she and other young teachers would “hole up in our classrooms and eat by ourselves. We would get frustrated with the older bunch because they had lost sight of why we were all teachers in the first place. It was kind of ridiculous. Aren’t we all adults who should be setting good examples for our students? And the faculty meetings were hilarious. The members of the departments would be clamoring to sit together and save seats. Situations like this made me want to run away as far as I could from teaching.”