If there was one word I would use to describe myself, I would truly (and proudly) classify myself as the following:
Nerd.
The Merriam-Webster definition is a bit self-degrading, but I will include it for scholarly purposes. They define “nerd” as “an unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person; especially one slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits.” Now, I have come to acquire a healthily strong sense of self-esteem and would never characterize myself as unstylish or unattractive. That being said, I have yet to completely outgrow my tendency for social stupidity and have always been a lover of knowledge. Both, I think, are good things.
Looking back at my long-term relationship with learning, I can see that there are a lot of things that have changed about me. For one, I began not even really knowing what knowledge was to begin with. This is confusing, I know. Allow me to give some context.
Little Nerd: The Beginnings of Me
Everything that I have achieved academically would have been impossible without my love for reading and writing. Thanks to my mom and dad, I got an early start. My mom recounted,
“I used to read a book to you… There wasn’t a day I didn’t read a book to you before you were 1 year old. I remember you repeating the A B C’s. You started reciting the alphabet at 18 months old. You knew the whole thing by 18 months old. You probably started reading short words by 3. By the time you went to kindergarten you could read. Some kids may not. You started reading when you were in preschool. Just words here and there. By the time you were in kindergarten and first grade you were up to par….”
Now, I can’t remember mindlessly repeating jibberish until cohesive language formed on my sloppy tongue, but I do have one book in mind that will never leave me (spoiler alert, it’s not The DaVinci Code): Mother Goose Rhymes. I recall my mom and dad turning page after cardboard page; the stockiness of the book shaped like a goose; the softened, blunt corners of the pages where our hands had rested one too many seconds. That was my first book. It was simple, of course, but brought me stories that never bored me, and moments with my parents that instilled in me a love for reading and the written word.
Going into elementary school was a blast for me. I remember the most exciting part of every day was getting to work in my reading group. Getting in a group of 5 and having a small discussion with my teacher about the book was so much fun. And there was the reading mat, which was conveniently located right next to a bookshelf. God, I loved bookshelves. My second grade teacher, Mrs. Callahan, had the best that I can remember. She had so many big books, not just little chapter ones, and she had Zoobooks.
Zoobooks was a magazine subscription that you could order (with the permission of your parents or someone 18 or older!) to learn about all sorts of animals. At this age, I was enamored with the idea of being a veterinarian or zoologist, so Zoobooks were some of my favorite things to read. After reading an animal’s Zoobook, I wanted to learn everything humanly possible about it. Some animals fascinated me so much, I would even ask my parents for encyclopedias about their species. Yes, that’s correct. Encyclopedias. And guess what I got for my 7th birthday? Oh yeah. An encyclopedia.
Innocently reading about owls and lions and other creatures now seems so far away, but I know these moments were crucial in my relationship with learning. Soon, reading about animals wasn’t enough. I eventually became obsessed with the TV channel Animal Planet and learned about the wonders of CD-ROM learning games. I was taking in information every possible way I could. Acquiring knowledge wasn’t a chore for me, it was fun. And this happy-go-lucky view towards learning translated into an almost unhealthy love for schoolwork. My dad can attest to this attitude of mine,
“Since elementary school you’ve always enjoyed learning, reading, doing the projects, homework.. You read for fun, not just for an assignment. You read above the reading level, and if they asked you to read or write a paper one page, you would do two pages… You would do more because you needed more room and you would do it for fun.”
Cue Nerd Puberty!: My Middle School Years
As I got older, my infatuation with learning never quite went away. On the contrary, I discovered, as most people probably do, that there is a lot in the world to learn about. History, literature, science, math, and countless other subjects were out there for me to seek. My parents never put me in any sports or forced me to learn an instrument, so for a long time, learning was literally my only hobby. Social media wasn’t exactly a thing yet, either, so I had yet to learn of the opportunities and distractions posed by it. I wasn’t “involved” in the traditional sense, but I didn’t mind it one bit, though. I knew I was a dork and I accepted it with open arms. I loved doing crosswords and beating my then-friend, now-roommate during competitions for our 7th grade poetry class. I also loved spending my evenings forcing my entire family to watch Wheel of Fortune (child’s play) and Jeopardy (big league) with me from 7 to 8 o’clock. Essentially, I loved being a nerd. I even got invited to an official nerd party! (Sidenote: it wasn’t technically a nerd party, but instead the National Youth Leadership State Conference in 2008.)
Middle school brought to me a plethora of things to absorb and explore. Now more mature than my elementary school self, I was exposed to more serious subject matter, like war and politics. I read a series by Kathryn Lasky named The Guardians of Ga’Hoole. They were fictional tales about warring owl kingdoms (not nerdy in the slightest, I know) that drew me in with their fantastical setting and mysterious characters. One character, I remember reading, had been inspired by the larger-than-life Winston Churchill. After that, I became hyper-intrigued by Churchill and his role in the Second World War. I even wrote my final research paper in my 8th grade English class about him. Learning about Churchill inspired me to be bolder and more confident in myself. He wasn’t known for being shy or soft-spoken, and once said,
“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”
There wasn’t one thing about Churchill that didn’t inspire me, motivate me, or amaze me (except, that is, his horrendous commitment to Britain’s colonial projects). His persona and legacy have been immortalized in every literary, visual, and audio depiction of his life. I read of Churchill’s accomplishments and would think, “Wow, I want to be like him.” Even this past winter, when I had the privilege of visiting London, seeing the infamous bust of him in Parliament’s lobby sent chills down my spine.
Were it not for my love for reading and writing, I would never have discovered Winston Churchill outside of a brief unit in history class. He might not ever have had the chance to impact me personally. I’ll even go as far as to say that were it not for reading and writing, I would never have discovered my true passions in life. Reading showed me that there is an art to the arrangement of words that cannot and should not underestimated. Writing showed me that realizing dreams are possible.
Inspired by the worlds I had explored through my favorite books, I began dreaming of someday becoming a writer. I tried here and there to create a longer story on my own, but found that it wasn’t my strong suit. That’s when I found poetry. My creative writing teacher, Mrs. Lee-Byrd always encouraged me to keep writing and pushed me out of my comfort zone with my work. I eventually self-published my work onto a website called Wattpad and found a community of aspiring writers to grow with. Long gone are the days I would write cheesy love poems, but I still write to this day and am sure I will never stop as long as I live.
A Nerd Evolves: Navigating High School
When I entered high school, probably the most awkward time of my entire life, I still carried my ever-developing love for reading, writing, and learning. Though I no longer yearned to learn about everything (I’m looking at you, algebra), I was still excited about a lot of things. And this time around, I had the Internet to help me learn. Granted, the Web was around a long time before I got to high school, but it was never really that relevant until then. I would go to school during the day and learn about the Bolshevik Revolution or discuss William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, but at home I was free to explore whatever I wanted to thanks to my phone and family computer.
Social media still wasn’t something I considered educational in the very least. At this point, Facebook was still a cesspool of annoying “fanpages” whose existences still plague me today (see: Third grade lied, we never use cursive.). The most social of the media I was personally consuming was YouTube. While other SM outlets hadn’t quite evolved into what they are today, YouTube was ahead of the curve. Long gone were the days of cheesy Ryan Higa skits that taught us all the important lessons behind “How to Be Gangsta.” Now, actual educative content was being produced by average people who who had a winning combination of great ideas, a camera, and internet access. I didn’t know it then, but watching random YouTube videos after school would someday lead me to feminism. At that point, however, I was just content watching fun science videos or obscure historical documentaries. Typical Cristina.
However, nothing impacted me during my 4 years at high school nearly as much as my month spent at the Governor’s School for Humanities and Visual and Performing Arts. In the summer of 2012, my life was changed. I got a mini-college experience at Radford University with a group of around 200 other high school sophomores and juniors taking classes and living in the campus dorms. I chose to take Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies (Hippies 101) and War, Torture, and Terrorism (Intro to Cynicism). For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by other nerdy kids who loved learning as much as I did. I met amazing people who were the most kind, intelligent, forward-thinking teenagers the state of Virginia could muster.
Cristina Aragón: Official Nerd
Graduating high school definitely marked a big shift in my life. In coming to JMU, I’ve still held onto my love for learning, but my eyes have been opened to so many new subjects and even more new ways to find out about them. Coming to college forced me to acknowledge that even with all that I had read before, I most certainly did not know everything. I didn’t even know the tiniest bit of anything compared to some of my professors. This hasn’t slowed me down, though. I’ve read more than I thought was humanly possible thanks to my major in English and have learned how to refine my writing thanks to my WRTC minor. What has been most influential thus far, however, is my exploration of Women’s and Gender Studies.
As I mentioned earlier, I first came across feminism through YouTube. In perusing videos online, I somehow came across channels where people would actively discuss topics like gender, sexuality, and race. These were all topics I had heard of before, but only in hush-hush settings. Everything was out in the open on YouTube. I could watch people describe lives and identities I didn’t realize were even possible. I learned and continue to learn from my favorite feminist YouTubers. One of my favorites is a woman called Kat Blaque, who is a trans activist and just so happened to stop by JMU in Fall of 2016! Below is one of the first videos I remember seeing from Kat’s channel:
Though learning about feminism on YouTube was an increasingly influential part of my life online, I had no idea that it would someday lead me to minoring in Women’s and Gender Studies. Now, with Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube combined, social media and online spaces have been some of the biggest influencers in my WGS education. I find myself now constantly seeking new information like updates on social movements, developments on political stories, and interesting feminist theory all through the Internet. One of the first things I do in any given day is check the top Twitter trends of the morning. From there, I’ll go to a favorite feminist user and see what they say about the topic and who else is coming up in the conversation. It’s sometimes stressful, but it’s engaging and interactive and one of the fastest ways to absorb new information. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t use my phone or laptop to consume news relevant to my areas of study and even share a spicy meme or two. In this way, the way I learn has changed a lot.
Despite now looking to Twitter instead of Zoobooks, I still consider myself in an active relationship with learning and academia. Throughout my life I’ve come to discover so many things about humanity and our world. Sometimes I’ve learned about things through books or tv, and other times I’ve looked to my cell phone. I definitely don’t discriminate as far as information outlets are concerned, and I believe that has made me open to learning a lot more than others might. Learning is a dynamic thing. Knowing that I can draw from the concrete and the cloud-based makes me even more excited to think of all the possibilities ahead. I’ve evolved a lot as an individual, and not one part of who I am today could have been achieved without my curiosity and appetite for knowledge. My name is Cristina and at the end of the day I can boldly state that yes, I am a nerd, and I am proud.
cristina aragon 