Wednesday 28 September 2011

Intellectual bad*sses (less-wordy Wednesday)

In my last teaching post I was a 6th form tutor. My form was all the kids doing 2 or more sciences for their AS levels, and was therefore made up of all the highest achievers in GCSEs the previous years.  On about the 3rd day of school one of the less achieving boys noticed this, and said "What's going on here - I'm in the nerd form".  To which another boy, who achieved 15 A*s in his GCSEs, yet was sitting there in his DMs and leather jacket, turned around and said "We are not nerds - we are intellectual bad*sses!".

I loved this expression and adopted it at once, not only for my form, but form myself.  It is a perfect description of me, or at least how I want to be perceived. I'm not a nerd per say, but I certainly have nerd tendencies. Neither am I a true intellectual, or indeed a true bad*ss. But I do have aspirations to be both (as well as a proper lentil weaver, but we will save that for another post).  I have always considered it a compliment to call someone a nerd, as it was what I wished I could be - clever AND achieving. But the nerds I aspire to be still have a level of cool - like Morrissey, Michael Stipe and Stephen Fry. Unfortunately, for most people, the term obviously brings with it images of national health specs and pocket protectors, so I was very pleased to get a better description.

My children are definitely intellectual badd*sses in training. They rock out to alternative music and wear more black than the average child, but they also love learning. They are very curious about the world and want to learn and understand everything. They devour non-fiction books and suitable sites on the internet. Miss K is particularly studious about her school work and always wants to be in the top group for everything. She was recently motified to discovered she is only in the second group for spelling and has spent the entire week working on it.  Middle E is just straight competitive, and has to be the BEST (I see a fair amount of disappointment on the horizon here).  Here they are this morning - even Miss G is attempting to do her reading (with her feet mind).

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