Excuse Me While I Geek Out

I grew up in small town Wyoming, population: 217. I went to school on a K-12 campus. Of the 31 people I graduated high school with, 10 of us had been there since kindergarten. Those who were seen as the cool or popular kids at the time of graduation established their place in the social food chain in early elementary school. In the grand scheme of things I was at the bottom…friend of a friend of the cool people. I wasn’t athletic, I played in the band, was a member of the Drama Club and Academic Team. It took me until the summer after my junior year of high school (when I got a summer job outside the realm of babysitting) to realize that people didn’t automatically think I was a dork by just looking at me. It seemed like a profound thought at the time, now it just seems a little sad. Junior High and High School are strange, surreal places.

Despite my geekiness, I found my niche in middle school and stayed there until I graduated. I was more than happy to stick with this group of kids, and to this day, whenever it’s possible (which, unfortunately, isn’t very much anymore) a good chunk of us still get together. (Hellloooo barn party over Christmas….in the rain) One thing (among a sizable list) of things we all participated in was a creative problem solving program. From third grade until I graduated from high school I was a member of Odyssey of the Mind, and later, Destination ImagiNation teams. Some of my best memories of middle school and high school were spent on weekends helping create everything from toilets that transformed into airplanes to shadow puppets, to Vaudeville acts.

The teams I was a part of did really well at state competitions and we made it to Global Finals 5 years in a row. My senior year our team even placed 4th out of 60+ teams and received an award for exceptional creativity. Not to sound all melodramatic, but in all honesty, OM, DI (and probably band, too, but that's another post for another time) got me through high school. Without them I’m sure I would have seen middle school and high school as highly traumatic experiences.

So all that geekiness came flooding back tonight as I was randomly surfing The Denver Post’s website and found this. Blogging about creative problem solving…it’s a geek’s dream combination.