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

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The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School Page 12

by Alexandra Robbins


  Even in some schools in which administrators have funded programs to try to combat bullying or hostilities among student cliques, educators are engaging in those same social behaviors. Teachers told me about secretaries who gossip about other teachers’ private appointments with the principal, departmental stereotypes (such as “wacky” fine arts teachers), and coaches of certain sports who get away with more than other staff members do. They said that other teachers make fun of their online photos or simply give, as one California teacher put it, “the distinct impression that I’m simply not cool or smart or cultured enough.” They talked about coworkers picking on them in order to impress other, cooler teachers.

  A counselor in Virginia described an intimidating drama teacher who wielded power by controlling access to the auditorium. A Tennessee special education teacher said she is frequently excluded by other teachers, “as if I am special ed. also.” Teachers even discussed, in their words, “mean-girlish” teachers and “teacher bullies.”

  Often teachers are pitted against each other in direct competition for teacher bonuses, giving further support to Eliza’s Survivor comparison. In some states, schools allocate various bonus amounts based on performance, but because each school has a limited pool of bonus money, one teacher’s gain is another’s loss. This system, like grade curving, does nothing to help foster a cooperative working environment. A Southwestern teacher told me, “I have seen teachers try to get students transferred into another teacher’s classroom or even call or email a teacher with a ‘pressing matter’ during that teacher’s evaluation. No one becomes a teacher because they plan to get rich, but a couple hundred dollars can make a teacher forget the reason they became a teacher in the first place.”

  Just as student cliques can affect a student’s academic life, teacher cliques can impact an educator’s professional life. Teachers told me about cliques palming off extra lunch assignments, bus duties, and chaperone responsibilities onto younger coworkers eager to please. “I have seen cliques destroy some teachers. But the worst part about cliques among teachers isn’t about teachers at all,” said Phoebe, who taught in Arizona and Kansas, and blames teacher cliques for driving her to take a break from teaching. “Cliques can create a hostile environment that changes the entire climate of the school and directly impacts student learning. If teachers are uncomfortable in their own school, they will pass on their uncertainties or negative attitude to students. That is simply unacceptable. The students are the ones who suffer. Teachers are supposed to play for the same team. Educating students should always be the number one goal. Unfortunately cliques change the priorities for some teachers.”

  Students know this. Several students told me about hostilities among teachers without my asking them. They overhear teachers talking about each other; one senior, for example, told me about the “teacher gossip frenzy” at his school. Some teens justify their own behavior by saying that teachers sometimes act even younger than students do. The kids aren’t wrong.

  To students who worry that people never outgrow cliquish behavior, it’s important to point out that many—perhaps most—people do. Adult cliques are more likely to surface among teachers than among non-school professionals because it may be harder to grow out of schoolchild habits when one works in a school. Outside of school, adults—like Regan—are appreciated much more for their individuality. The school setting, specifically, can have this distressing effect on people.

  Teachers who are members of cliques rationalize them by saying they need a select group of coworkers to complain to, that they are not exclusive, or that they are left out of other colleagues’ cliques. Tiffani, an Arkansas teacher, is a member of a teacher clique that calls itself a “secret sorority” and goes by the name TADA: Teachers Against Dumbasses. TADA meets occasionally after school to “get together over margaritas and vent about the administration, discipline, and anything else we deem necessary. We’ve even taken weekend trips, like to Memphis, where we hit all the bars on Beale Street!” Tiffani said. TADA claims to be inclusive because members put up signs in the copy room (TADA TONIGHT! 4:30 AT [THE BAR]!), but Tiffani admitted, “Most of us have been personally invited. A core group of us really stay together.” And wear pink TADA T-shirts. “When the students ask about our T-shirts,” Tiffani said, “we all say, ‘Oh, it’s just a teacher sorority!’ ”

  Fall

  Why Quirk Theory Works

  Chapter 4

  IN THE SHADOW OF THE FREAK TREE

  When I asked students at one high school to describe their classmates’ labels, their attitudes toward those groups varied considerably—except in one instance. No matter the label of the person responding, the descriptions of the students who hung out by the “freak tree” were similar. “Eccentric, over-the-top, and pretty perverted,” said a “newsie” devoted to the student paper. “The sci-fi convention; the weird ones interested in anime, magic cards, and anything most middle and elementary students are also interested in,” said a student government officer. “The otaku/odd person group is bizarre,” said a senior girl. “Socially awkward and totally irritating,” said a geek. “They’re completely different. Average people are weirded out by the tree people,” said a loner.

  So I decided to talk to one of them. On most weekdays, Amy, a senior, spends time before school, during lunch, and sometimes after school with the tree people. She says that they are a mix of “freaky kids, drama kids, white kids, and slightly emo kids. And almost all of them are not afraid to speak their minds and be loud, proud, and wacky about it.” For fun, the tree people like to go to the park to “DRAT,” their term for massive team battles in which they shoot each other with nerf guns or engage in close combat with plastic swords or PVC pipes. To others, DRAT may look like chaos, but the skirmishes are regulated by a set of predetermined rules and can be framed by more well-known games like Capture the Flag or King of the Hill. “If you look at this game, it seems immature,” Amy says, “but it’s really fun and a great stress reliever. Everyone finishes the game relatively happy, even if they lost.”

  Amy says she fits in with the tree people because she is a self-proclaimed “anime freak” who founded her school’s anime club and reads a lot of manga. Some classmates call her a weirdo because she doesn’t follow trends, whether they involve clothes, behavior, or interests. Others call her a freak because her jokes can be “out there” and because she feels more comfortable using words she made up to replace curses and other phrases.

  As a member of a school sports team and the band, Amy could hang out with other groups. Sometimes she does; she’ll have a sleepover with her AP friends or go out to eat with teammates. But she always comes back to the freak tree. Her rationale reminds me of her description of DRAT: It looks juvenile from the outside, but in reality it serves as a haven of comfort, acceptance, and stress relief. “The tree guys are more fun. When I’m with the tree guys, I’m never bored, whether there’s a wacky conversation about a TV show, an anime, or what would happen if the school was taken over by zombies, or maybe someone’s doing a mock fight or reenacting a movie scene,” she says. “When I’m with these guys, I don’t have to think about school or anything else that stresses me out. I can just relax, have fun, and act like a kid for once.”

  When I ask Amy how the tree people feel about students calling their gathering place “the freak tree,” she says they usually laugh about it. “We know we’re weirdos, but we pretty much don’t care. Even if all the other kids are staring at us and thinking we’re freaks, it doesn’t matter. We’re having fun, all of us, together. At the tree, it doesn’t feel like you have to restrain yourself from what you say or do. One of my friends dresses up in clothes that look like something out of an anime,” she says. “In fact, if you do something that’s just the right crazy, the others might join in. One time some people started this thing where they clapped in front of themselves and then in back constantly, and we had a line of about ten people doing it in time with each other. It looked crazy, but it wa
s funny. Yeah, it can be a little off-putting being known as the freak tree, but at least we aren’t afraid to have fun.”

  When Amy goes to college, in her free time she hopes to join a Masters Water Polo team and continue practicing kendo and aikido. She plans to keep writing fiction. Someday, she says, “I can see myself as a CEO of a local company that helps my state’s economy by helping small businesses. I want to help out my community. That job appeals to my interests in business, marketing, advertising, and management, and I may be able to help my friends from all groups find jobs.”

  It’s hard not to wonder what Amy’s classmates—the same ones who dismissed her group as bizarre, perverted, irritating, and “completely different”—would think of her if they got to know her. If they let go of some of their image concerns, some of those students would probably benefit from tree people pastimes that let them blow off steam by recapturing their childhood. Some of them would probably appreciate “just the right crazy.” It’s hard not to wonder whether, if those classmates took the time to get to know the tree people, they might not think they were so bizarre after all.

  IN THE MINDS OF their peers, too often students become caricatures of themselves. They are reduced to stick figures, save a “weird” feature that others blow up into mythic proportions and then use as an excuse to dismiss them; they gather by the freak tree, for example, dye their hair pink, or unself-consciously display their emotions. Throughout the course of reporting The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth, I encountered many fantastic kids considered weird. To me, they seemed to be the type of students whom classmates were too quick to judge, students who have so much more to offer than is evident during a forty-minute class or a quick lunchtime glimpse. To me, they seemed to be the type of students whom others should be proud to befriend.

  Suzanne, one of those students, is not popular. A senior at a Georgia private school, she wears band T-shirts and grungy jeans that kids make fun of. Classmates tease her for spending a disproportionate amount of time in the art room. They don’t necessarily dislike Suzanne, but they don’t invite her out on weekends. In seventh grade, classmates posted nasty messages online about her. “Whore,” they called her. “Slut.” “The ugliest girl.” Suzanne was bewildered. She was thirteen. She had never kissed a boy.

  Today, some students refer to Suzanne as the artsy girl because it seems like she’s always off doing art projects. Some call her an indie kid because she doesn’t listen to the same music they do. They continue to exclude her. She just doesn’t seem to think like everybody else.

  Laney, an eighth grader in Indiana, is not popular. She’s the kind of girl who dances randomly in public, occasionally gives human names to inanimate objects, and once tried licking her cat just to see how it tasted. (She concluded, “It tastes like cat!”) Her friends tell her that some people don’t talk to her because they’re too embarrassed to be seen interacting with someone that far down the social chain.

  Students have called Laney creepy because she wears dark clothing and has “a death glare.” Many have asked her if she is emo, but she says she’s “too weird to be emo.” She just doesn’t seem to behave like everybody else.

  Allie, a sophomore in northern California, is not popular. Students have picked on her since elementary school. Most recently they jeered at her in the cafeteria line because she unabashedly wore a black felt bunny hat with long floppy ears that grazed her shoulder blades. Allie watches anime frequently and plays Warhammer 40K, a miniature tabletop war game set in a fantasy world.

  Classmates give her the same label they give other students who differ from the in crowd: They call her a freak. She just doesn’t seem to interact like everybody else.

  Flor, a junior in Oklahoma, is not popular. She never plays sports or runs around with other kids. Students call her a slacker because she turns in assignments at the last minute and she dropped out of school for a while. They make fun of her ethnicity. At school, a white boy asked her recently why she didn’t “act more Mexican.”

  “How are Mexicans supposed to act?” Flor asked.

  “You’re supposed to wear a lot of makeup and have a boyfriend, wear lots of jewelry, and speak Spanish all the time.” This upset Flor, who is proud of her heritage. It didn’t upset her nearly as much, however, as when people told her “go back to where you came from.” Flor was born in the United States. She just doesn’t seem to assimilate like everybody else.

  Suzanne, The Artsy Indie

  There’s a reason that Suzanne wears plain, grungy clothes to school. She spends as much time as she can in the art room, where she paints. Most of Suzanne’s impressive senior portfolio consists of watercolor, a difficult medium. “I love watercolor because it’s not very precise,” she says. “Your lines may not be exactly straight, your colors a little strange, but it still looks really cool.”

  She favors indie music because she identifies with it. “It’s really good music that was disregarded by the mainstream. I guess I kind of relate to the bands, feeling left out by my peers,” she says. “What’s fantastic about the indie or DIY subculture is that people are doing it without the help of major record companies or a traditional art school education. These people have different ideas that have the power to change art, music, and fashion forever.”

  When I check in with Suzanne again after high school graduation, I learn that her artwork led to a pre-college summer job as a wardrobe assistant on an independent film. When the wardrobe head quit, Suzanne replaced her—at age eighteen.

  Laney, The Creepy Girl

  When someone calls Laney weird, she is thankful for the validation “that I’m not a copy of the popular people,” she says. She doesn’t mean to walk around the hallways with a death glare; she’s usually just deep in thought as she observes her surroundings.

  Laney not only enjoys doing the things for which other kids call her creepy; she also revels in the originality. She high-fives strangers, talks to her hamster in funny accents, runs barefoot in the snow, drinks her milk with food coloring, and reads the dictionary. A teacher who has taught Laney for two years describes her as someone who “stands out in a good way because she breaks the typical eighth-grade girl mold.” She is a spirited eccentric who is happy, smart, and comfortable with herself, with no qualms about daring to be different.

  Allie, The Freak

  It’s exhilarating for Allie to do her own thing; she is content to befriend the people who like her for herself and to ignore the ones who don’t. She guesses that the reason people call her a freak is that they can’t categorize her accurately. She says, “Do you remember how little kids put a circle inside a circle shape and the box inside the box shape? It’s like that. [I’m not the circle or the box.] I’m a platypus.”

  Allie’s clothes reflect this carefree attitude. She decorated her purse with pins from a Fanime convention. She likes picking out items to wear from her dad’s closet—ties, buttoned shirts, suit jackets, a Nirvana shirt—because “they smell like him and are interesting,” she says. She can’t raid her mother’s wardrobe. She died when Allie was three.

  Allie likes being different. She enjoys Warhammer 40K because it’s fascinating and collaborative. Undaunted by the jeers, she continues to wear the bunny hat about twice a month. And she has no concerns about trying to sort out her identity as she maneuvers through high school, because she already knows who she is.

  Flor, The Mexican Slacker

  The students who call Flor a slacker don’t know what they’re talking about. Flor turns in assignments at the last minute because her family can’t afford a computer. She does her best to finish her work on time, often giving up lunch hours to complete and print out papers at school. She’s trying hard to get a scholarship so that she will be able to attend college. She wants to study math and neurology.

  Flor dropped out of school as a freshman to take care of her little brother while her parents were two thousand miles away for two months. She never plays sports because she has a congenital heart defec
t that requires a pacemaker. Yet she remains strong and positive. “I enjoy being unique at school. At the end of the day, I have the few people who were able to step out of their comfort zones to realize that I’m not crazy, or an airhead, or a slacker, or a stereotype Mexican. I’m just me.”

  BLUE, HAWAII | THE GAMER

  At a teacher conference requested by Blue’s mother, the teachers tried to explain to her that the Fs on Blue’s progress report were not formal grades, but merely indicators that he hadn’t caught up on his homework. Most of his grades were As and Bs. He did not attempt to cheat as did other students. He excelled at in-class work. “He just needs some space,” they told his mother. “He’s really trying.”

  When Blue’s mother offered him a ride after the conference, Blue didn’t want to go home. He biked to the arcade to play DrumMania. An hour later, when he arrived home, his mother was in the car, about to pull out of the driveway to look for him. She was furious. As he stored his bike in the garage, she yelled at him. “What the fuck?! You’re really starting to Piss. Me. Off.” She told him to go straight to the kitchen and sit down. He thought he knew what was coming. He was wrong. “How fucked up are you?! What the fuck are you doing?” she shouted.

  Blue didn’t know how to respond.

  “Answer me, goddammit, before I beat the shit out of you.” Blue paused before answering. He knew her threat was not idle.

  At his silence, she cocked her head and asked suddenly, “How would you draw a lion?”

  “What?!”

 

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