[Alan Anderson]

I believe that "nerd" carries a connotation of social awkwardness. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's certainly not something to be proud of.

In my circle of friends in high school, many of us would have been labeled nerds by others. Looking back at it from my present point of view, I think it's because we didn't think "being popular" was worth spending a lot of energy on, when there were so many other interesting things to keep our focus. Participating in choir, math and chess clubs, playing euchre during lunch, planning and carrying out intricate senior pranks, helping to maintain the auditorium audio system, and simply enjoying the quest for knowledge...who had time for practicing "popularity", or even trying to figure out what it was?

So we were nerds mostly because we enjoyed learning for learning's sake, and ignored being popular for popularity's sake. I think I prefer having done it that way, even if it means I didn't learn how to be effortlessly social at a young age and still need to intentionally concentrate on the task in order not to appear awkward in non-geeky social situations today.

The word "geek" is a completely different topic.