The Observer, April 18, 2008
Volume XL, Issue 25
Quarked: Lack of Star Trek knowledge considered weird at Case
I have a confession to make: I have never actually seen Star Trek. You heard me right. I spent most of my younger years only dimly aware of the show's existence due to a combination of factors. By the time I reached Case, Star Trek was such a basic thing that no one would be bothered to watch something so elementary.
If you ever want to suddenly stand out at Case, wandering into a group of people and saying you only vaguely know that Spock is the one with pointy ears and the Borg is this evil thing that assimilates will definitely get attention. (Another confession: I wasn't even sure of the above stated facts, and had to double-check them on Wikipedia.) Further admit that you've never seen Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, Firefly, or even Stargate, and you will generate nothing less than looks of pure disbelief. "You're not a real nerd!" I've had people shout at me in a tone reserved in the Middle Ages to denounce witches, which I've always found hilarious. Laughing at someone when they've just condemned you to normalcy is not the best course of action, however, so I often settle for a quizzical stare instead.
The reason I'm so puzzled by this reaction, of course, is because I am a physics major and physics is undoubtedly one of the nerdiest majors in the book. A student of physics and engineering often can't tell you the difference between Balzac and Bizet, but if you missed a science fiction television series along the way, you are considered uncultured.
A lot of this nerd culture spills into how science and engineering majors view other disciplines, of course. For example, I've been working on a history minor throughout my undergraduate career and it soon became clear that many of my fellow physics majors have no clue why in hell I would do such a thing. Indeed, it has been pointed out to me numerous times that taking excess history classes is a rather "worthless" pastime for someone in my discipline. How exactly hearing stories about Vikings and the Peloponnesian War is more worthless than following stories surrounding the crew of the Enterprise remains undetermined.
Things got even weirder when I decided to do study abroad last year. I chose to go to New Zealand, partly for the adventure but mainly for the weather, and I might as well have written off my academic career as far as some people were concerned. "I could never do that. What about labs and classes?" some students asked, apparently unaware that physics is a universal phenomenon.
I ended up going, of course, and had a wonderful time, aided in part by the fact that it turned out no one watched Star Trek in New Zealand. Television was only introduced there in 1960 and nothing international was really shown until the 1970s, meaning The Original Series just plain never got airtime. One can argue that I perhaps shouldn't be defending my normalcy based off of a country where the sheep outnumber people 10 to one, but one can also argue that I learned more about the world through seeing a bit more of it, so there you go.
Maybe I should strike a deal with a few of my fellow physicists: you read Balzac or listen to Bizet this summer, and I'll hunker down and watch Star Trek. We'll all mutually learn a bit about something new, and enjoy ourselves a lot. Consider it a cultural exchange.
When not doing something else, Yvette Cendes is a fourth-year physics major.
