there is a strong correlation between being smart
and being a nerd, and an even stronger inverse correlation between
being a nerd and being popular. Being smart seems to make you
unpopular.
Nerds serve two
masters. They want to be popular, certainly, but they want even
more to be smart. And popularity is not something you can do in
your spare time
it takes work to
be popular
school, standards for coolness are so high (or at least,
so specific) that you don't have to be especially awkward to look
awkward by comparison.
Few smart kids can spare the attention that popularity requires.
Unless they also happen to be good-looking, natural athletes, or
siblings of popular kids, they'll tend to become nerds.
that's
why smart people's lives are worst between, say, the ages of eleven
and seventeen
Nerds would find their unpopularity more bearable if it merely
caused them to be ignored. Unfortunately, to be unpopular in school
is to be actively persecuted.
clipped from: www.paulgraham.com 
