[A. Snodgrass]

How I got into being a geek: I had role models. Both of my parents went to college in science fields, my dad going on to become a M.D. I tended to enjoy math and science more then I enjoyed some of the other fields that I was studying. Basically coming from an atmosphere where being a 'geek' was not necessarily a bad thing helped a lot. Also active encouragement for me to follow what I liked, rather then bow to social pressure was a very important thing.
Strong as male geeks are, the pressures on female geeks is sometimes greater. In junior high and high school I often ran into the opinion that female geeks couldnt be feminine, or were not "womanly" because of their interests by both the general population of the school and the male geeks of the school. This was not always true, but it was something that was difficult to fight.
Sometimes the most telling answer is why somebody who loves technology, or science or math will ignore that, and will act like a socialite or something that they are not, just to fit in. The people who do well in the subject, and for all purposes show interest in it and yet they ignore the subject. For both men and women this is a very telling thing about the pressures of being a geek in todays society.