When I was at secondary school, the computer room was my favourite place. I remember standing outside the door at lunch-time waiting for computer club to start, feeling a tingle of anticipation at the thought of getting back to the program I was in the middle of writing. The process of learning to speak to a computer in its own language — tweaking and correcting the code bit by bit until finally the machine understood what you were telling it to do — seemed like a kind of magic to me.
I know — not exactly cool, was I?
Except…I have a real problem with that last sentence. Why, after declaring an interest in something like computer programming, do I feel the need to make a joke about how uncool I was? How can I not have got past that yet? I am not a teenager any more. I haven’t been one for nearly 23 years.
Secondary school can be an overwhelmingly tribal place. Status is everything, and the making of friends is a political process where your social standing depends on who you hang out with.
I went to an all-girls school — a crucible of gossip and rivalry, fleeting alliances and dramatic fallings-out. I didn’t really engage with much of this, and at the time I definitely thought less of myself for it. These days, though, I actually feel quite proud of how faithfully I pursued my own hobbies there — computers, books, music — and made my own like-minded friends who enjoyed that stuff, too. I knew I wasn’t popular and I certainly didn’t love that fact, but nor did I try to get in with the ‘in’ crowd. Those girls held no appeal for me — I didn’t want to spend time with them.
In the adult world, these preoccupations become hugely diluted, but there’s still an enduring sense that some interests have a higher status than others. Last year, an article went around on social media. Written by David Hopkins, it was called How a TV Sitcom Triggered the Downfall of Western Civilization. It was about Ross from Friends — the archetypal Jewish geek. The author argued that the way he was treated by the other five was representative of the anti-intellectualism in modern society:
“Any time Ross would say anything about his interests, his studies, his ideas, whenever he was mid-sentence, one of his “friends” was sure to groan and say how boring Ross was, how stupid it is to be smart, and that nobody cares.”
Since the days of Friends, being a geek has acquired a new social acceptability — just see The Big Bang Theory — but there’s still a sense of judgment implied there that I find wholly inappropriate: an idea that you’re now "allowed" to be geeky. What possible business is it of anyone else what an individual’s enthusiasms are?
By the time we are properly adults, and have moved beyond the desperate insecurities of adolescence, it should be possible to pursue the things we enjoy without that saying anything whatsoever about our social status. But more than that — if, instead of mocking people for their interests, we stop for a moment and listen to what they have to say, then we can find out some fascinating things. When people are passionate about a subject, that passion is contagious: we can catch it too, even if just for the few minutes we are talking to them.
To prove this point to myself, I decided to watch the most boring-sounding TED talk I could find. TED is a collection of speeches by people who are leaders in their field, are hugely enthusiastic about what they do and are experts in communicating that enthusiasm. My reasoning was that it should be possible to watch a TED talk about anything at all and find that it keeps my attention at least on some level. Browsing the TED website, it was curiously difficult to force my eye to skip over the many enticing topics and alight on what sounded (to me) like the dullest subject possible. In the end, I chose Jonas Eliasson's How to Solve Traffic Jams.
My theory was vindicated. In 10 minutes, I laughed out loud once, noted down a sentence that I felt had a wider relevance in life, and was absorbed throughout. And I now know how to solve traffic jams! Apparently, if you introduce a congestion charge during rush hour, people make small changes to the time they drive, without even noticing. By dipping my toe briefly into an unfamiliar world, my day was enriched.
So, whatever you like doing — whether it’s collecting minerals or having manicures, honing your backgammon skills or playing the balalaika — it’s all good. There is no need to apologise.
Let’s try the beginning of my column again: When I was at secondary school, the computer room was my favourite place. And that’s completely fine.
@susanreuben
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