today s muet paper 3 s compre....one of it of cuz....very nice wan... :P tot it was kinda interesting...sharing it....
I am a nerd. While the Internet boom has lent some respectability to the term, narrow minded stereotypes still linger. Nerds are supposedly friendless, book-smart sissies who stuck up to authority figures. Some of our image problem stem from our obsession with mastering every inane detail of our interests. But to call us 'suck-ups' is nonsense. We often horrify those in authority with our inability to understand, let alone follow, societal norms.
Like most nerds, I did not know I was one until I started school. There I quickly found out that my enthusiasm for answering the teacher's questions made others fell I was trying to make them look bad. My classmates were not shy about expressing their feelings on the playground. Fortunately, I was tall and stood my ground, a bluff that helped repel bullies. But mostly I survived by learning to be quiet in class.
I became a secondary school teacehr because I realized there were lots of young nerds who neede to know that being a nerd was not just okay, but something wonderful. Unfortunately, they were not likely to hear this from teachers, although virtually every modern blessing liberial democracy to electric motors; originated woth nerds. Some, like Thomas Paine, were idealistic; others, like Tesla, eccentric. Newton was arrogant and Einstein absent minded. and make no mistae: 17-years old versions of these geniuses, placed in modern secondary schools, would instantly be labelled nerds.
I raised two nerd sons partly because I did not have the cleverness to raise "cool" kids, but also because I wanted nerds to talk with. Every year I invited my Advanced Placement physics students to my house for study sessions before a big exam. Last year one nerd student's mother told me that her son had returned home and talked for hours about how awesome it was to have found a nerd family.
When my sons were still in school, they were often picked on by classmates. My older boy, a pale-non active kid, was an easy target. When his middle-school science asked if anyone could name any elements, he recited the periodic table from memory. Thanks to events like that, he endured nerd hell at the hands of bullies.
Despite childhood trials, my sons remain devoted nerds. My older son speaks four foreign languages and has hitched around Europe three times. My younger son proved his teacher wrong and graduated from secondary school with flying colours. he did so well he was asked to give a speech before 500 educators and politicians who had gathered to honour education.
As I waited gof him to talk, my stomach flip-flopped. I had no idea what he was going to say. He rose from his seat and delivered ten minutes of stand-up comedy on being a nerd. The audince laughed until they cried, I cried. Afterwards, a young nerd paid him his highest compliment: "Thank you for what you have done for our people." No, our kind does not fit the stereotypes, but yes, there is something wonderful about being a nerd.
( Adapted from, My Kids Are Smarter than Yours by Tom Rogers, Reader's Digest February 2002 )
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