Thursday, January 6, 2011

Engineers are socially retarded.

So I went to a dinner for students of a computer science camp for high schoolers, hosted at a local university. Nominally to give them some interaction with people "in the industry"*. Imagine a room full of 15 to 17-year old computer geeks. But not your regular, run of the mill geek, but ones geeky enough to be sent to computer camp during their summer vacation.

Had I stopped talking, I was afraid the entire room might be sucked into a black hole of awkward. Was it the nerdiness? Being that age? Perhaps just the collective reinforcement being around so many others like yourself. Like a concentrated vacuum where normal social skills should have been.

It reminded me so much of myself and my own adolescence. Ah, the memories! The worst part? I actually made up an excuse to duck out of the conversation, because I couldn't stand the awkwardness.

(*The porn business. I quite my IT job months ago.)

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