But, many years on, I'm guessing things might have changed slightly. Sure, labels are still thrown around, but 'geek' doesn't have anywhere near as many negative connotations as it once did at school.
Video games are awesome. Lightsaber fights are awesome. Being able to hack into your neighbour's wifi is awesome. Being a geek is now cool. Dr. Who has made a come back. Star Trek has new films. And knowing HTML is an essential life skill. You can even buy tshirts proclaiming your status.
But geeky hasn't only taken over the entertainment world. Technology has developed so rapidly that most are still catching up, but those with the right skills can easily navigate through the fog of HTML and sail on the fiber optic sea.
Looking through the Graduate Recruitment Bureau's first search page, six out of the fifteen results are directly related to IT and two to engineering. Geeks may have been holed up in their bedrooms with a soldering iron and a motherboard for much of their childhood, but, because of their carefully maintained computer tans, they have a much wider choice of jobs in the current market.
 |
| Image by JD Hancock |
But it's not only those jobs directly in the field of computing, science or engineering which require 'geeky' skills. A lot of jobs now want them, especially basics in computing. So those who have grown up developing and honing these skills are already leaps and bounds ahead in terms of their CVs.
With the world becoming increasingly more electronics based, knowing your way around hardware is an extremely desirable skill to have. Pretty much every office will be equipped with one, or several, computers, and 80% of households having internet access, and the people who know the ins and outs of these complicated machines have their fingers right on the pulse.
But despite the great number of people with access to the internet, according to the Office of National Statistics: “21 per cent of Internet users did not believe their skills were sufficient to protect their personal data.”
This was in 2011. For a world where online banking and shopping is prolific, this is still a worrying amount of people who are ill equipped for the online world. Potentially, anyone with a greater knowledge of how the internet works than these people could hack into their accounts, drain their money and steal their identity.
Again, don't diss the geeks: they could be the ones protecting you from this threat.
They could also be the ones designing your new website, in order for you to reach more people and make more money.
They could also be the ones working right now on a cure for cancer. They could also be the ones who, with a simple pull of the plug, could make sure the modern world gets plunged straight back into the dark ages.
So before you judge a geek by how much rack space they have or how many tshirts with hilarious code jokes make up their wardrobe: remember that they could quite easily master photoshop and circulate pictures of you worldwide with a donkey's head. Or something much worse.
Or they could just swing on their cape and ridicule you, because they've got a utility belt full of skills with which to rule the modern day world.
Jenny DuckAbout the Guest Author:
Jenny Duck is a recent English Literature and German graduate. She enjoys video games and films and can replace computer memory with the best of them. She is a proud geek and writes for Connetu.