Posts tagged with club.

Nerds of the world unite (in a club, at least)

Jennifer Gardy, October 14, 2008 at 11:24 AM

 

As you progress through the four to n years of your undergraduate university education, your perspective on the value of a university education will undergo a number of shifts.

At certain points, you'll likely feel that the sole merit of attending university is that it teaches you how to learn everything there is to know on a particular subject and then promptly forget it all immediately after being examined on it. There are other times when it seems as if all you're going to have to show after four years and $20,000 is a merit badge for Extraordinary Prowess in Note-Taking Using the Four-Colour Clicky Pen and Mini-Ruler. And there are many, many periods during which it appears that the single greatest benefit of a university education is that it perfects your ability to ferret out free food and cheap beer from miles away. As an aside, while your cramming and clicky-pen skills will fade over time, the free food instinct never, never dulls. I still feel a disruption in the force every time free pizza shows up within a 5km radius.

After several years in whatever variant of The Real World you end up in, however, you will realize that the point of university  was, in fact, to equip you with the skills you need in order to be someone who is actually capable of doing an Important Job in said Real World. If we went directly from high school to high-level jobs, astronomers would be naming new planets things like "My Dick", architects tasked with designing a new city block would turn in perfect copies of Halo 3 levels, and the biological sciences would focus solely on sex at the expense of everything else.

While it would be sort of cool to have a business card that read Chief Executive Officer in Charge of Awesome, it really is better for all involved if we take a little time to ripen on the university vine. One of the best things you can do to facilitate this ripening is to expand your social horizons by joining a club.

Indeed, extracurricular activities are one of the most significant benefits of attending university and many times, it is the interests and skills you develop through those pursuits that have a greater hand in influencing your career path than does your choice of degree.

I could spend the remainder of this column preaching some inspirational drivel about following your heart, but it's nothing you couldn't get off some cheap poster with a picture of a gusty kitten on it. Instead, I will tell you about a club that all of you are welcome to join. A club that started on the UBC campus but quickly found internet-wide fame. A club for nerds. A club for beer.

A club called the Order of The Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique.

O.O.T.S.S.O.E.R.A.A.A.P, as it shall henceforth be referred to, came about one evening nearly two years ago at one of UBC's finer purveyors of ethanol-based spirits. A mixed bag of grad students, post-docs and faculty, all of whom worked in various and sundry aspects of science communication, came together under the auspices of discussing a new science journalism endeavour. Well, more accurately we came because our mutual friend, the man who was to become our Lord Baden Powell, promised to buy us a round.

Later that evening, our hearts buoyed by the prospect of finding like-minded nerds and warmed by the liquor, we decided to make our meetings a more regular affair. Somewhere around the third meeting, one of our number pointed out that attending these regular meetings was not dissimilar to going to Scouts or Brownies as a youth, save for the fact that instead of building popsicle stick birdhouses, we just sat around and drank.

Sensing a theme that could be exploited for comedic value, we seized upon the Scout motif and ran with it. Various ideas for merit badges on the theme of science were tossed around, and within days we had a credo, a website http://www.scq.ubc.ca/order-of-the-science-scouts-of-exemplary-repute-and-above-average-physique/ and virtual badges thanks to the efforts of our Baden Powell, Dave Ng. Founding member and part-time rock star Jeffrey Helm also provided us with our theme song, "Increase the n", a guitar-driven ode to the issue of sampling size and statistical significance whose lyrics were later published in Nature (thereby making Mr. Helm the only founding member eligible to receive the "Worship Me - I've published in Nature or Science" merit badge).

 In what is surely to go down as O.O.T.S.S.O.E.R.A.A.A.P's second-finest moment, we even had an entire BoingBoing post devoted to our little organization, at which point interest in our project and membership in our Facebook group http://ubc.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2386691999&ref=mf soared. In case you are wondering about our finest moment, that would be when SEED Magazine gave us free beer money. We are easily bought.

We, the founding members of O.O.T.S.S.O.E.R.A.A.A.P, would like nothing better than to see nerds across the globe come together on their own campus to discuss issues of science and scientific literacy over a few pitchers of ale. Well, actually we would like to figure out how to turn ourselves into some sort of non-profit so we can write off beer costs, but that is an issue for our accountant.

Back to my original point... As you ponder your extracurricular activities this term, consider taking a moment out of your busy schedule to gather some like-minded individuals and start an O.O.T.S.S.O.E.R.A.A.A.P chapter on your campus. The criteria for membership is simple. Members must be:

 

  • - not opposed to alcohol.
  • - fond of IPCC reports (especially the pictures).
  • - mostly in agreement with the "truth."
  • - into badges.
  • - grieving for the slow and miserable death of the Hubble Space Telescope.
  • - possibly possessed of supernatural powers.
  • - committed to the constant and diligent presentation of science stories, be it to editors, producers, directors, educators, relatives and/or friends of various ilk, in an effort to lessen the gap that is this thing we call public scientific literacy.

 

Should you elect to join this noble organization, you will have access to our vast array of scientific merit badges. These include awards such as the "Dodger of monkey shit" badge, the "Knows how to collect semen from more than one species" badge, and the coveted "Have violated the posterior of an animal in the name of science" badge. Lest you think we are biased towards awarding badges for activities involving animals' nether-regions, we also have the "My degree inadvertently makes me competent in fixing household appliances" badge, the "I actually AM a freakin' rocket scientist" badge, and the "I may look like a scientist, but I am actually also a pirate" badge.

 

So if you like beer and badges, sign up. We're nice people that your Mom and Dad would approve of, and drinking beer and making up ideas for badges is one of those skills that you just might need when you have an Important Job in The Real World, like Chief Executive Officer in Charge of Awesome.

 

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