The last of the deep thinkers (From Gazette & Herald)

The last of the deep thinkers

HANNAH GIBBONS headed for Cambridge recently for an intensive philosophy course - and was soon into the intellectually stimulating game of 'spotting the spod'.

"SPOTTED my first spod," I texted my sister on the train down to Cambridge a few weeks ago (no, I wasn't trying to become a student there as well).

"Describe," she replied.

"Bespectacled, ginger, acned. Ticks all the boxes. I anticipate more," I told her.

'Spods', these mystical creatures that I'm describing, also go by the name of geeks, dorks or nerds and I was headed towards a week full of them in my "intensive and enriching philosophy course aiming to answer the question - what is truth?".

Blimey, how deep for the end of the year, I thought. I had been put forward for the course kicking and screaming by my Religious Studies teacher - actually, that's a bit of a lie. I was quite intrigued to find out how I'd survive in these kind of serious situations and, for all my prejudices, it's always nice to spend time with new people, isn't it?

But, in essence, I am just a horrible girl. It grieves me to admit that I went to 'Spod Camp' entertaining every possible notion of the geekiness that I would encounter, yet I can't say that, on first impressions, my preconceived ideas were proved too wrong.

There were rather too many beige fleeces around for my liking, and when the opening small talk wasn't "Have you got any siblings?" but "Plato or Aristotle?" I knew I'd have a little readjusting to do.

Though, of course, I wouldn't write people off on the basis of appearance. I sidled up to an angry looking girl without a smile on her face and introduced myself with the simple, yet effective (I thought) "Hello, I'm Hannah."

She responded with "You're too squeaky" and turned her back on me. A simple "nice to meet you" would have done, I felt.

However, I'm happy to report that she was an exception in the crowd and once I found a couple of allies who had had the same treatment, things started to look a little chirpier. But we were still in the minority - people were a little hostile and from then on it became a mission of mine to figure out exactly what rubbed them up the wrong way.

It became a little clearer when I got in rather a heated debate with a home-schooled boy one day, and had the audacity to suggest that he was missing out by not being involved in school sports teams. Oh, the outcry from the entire table when I suggested that they encouraged teamwork and friendship! There were clearly some deep chips on some of these people's shoulders and I accidentally seemed to ignite their pain.

The week went on, and I felt like I wasn't making much progress, until one evening when I suggested we played Hide and Seek. What guffaws! It was like I'd suggested some sort of devil worship to a bunch of devout Christians. But after hurriedly putting an intelligent-sounding case forward for the game (something about happiness, endorphins, studies in America - honestly, they took a lot of convincing), I finally got my way, and, soon enough, laughter filled the air! And it wasn't intellectually induced! Truth or Dare followed (I drew the line at Spin the Bottle, for my own sake) and in the end I was able to overlook the plaid skirts and polo necks, and I hope that they could overlook my tutu over jeans ensemble.

So a lesson learned - keep an open mind to oddly dressed people and always suggest a childish game to break down those airs and graces (though, had I my time again, I may have steered clear of Truth or Dare - sometimes those rebels showed me up a little).

Updated: 16:10 Wednesday, January 11, 2006