OF NERDS AND KANGAROOS

I recently reconnected with my fellow Austin College alumni on Facebook. It's been fun. I know some of you kids younger than Generation X and Millennials think Facebook is for old people, but that's where I've connected with my friends. Someday you'll be old and on Facebook, too. I'm gonna laugh when I see you there, too.

If you don't know Austin College, you should. It's a right fine school, chartered in 1849 and still operating under that original charter, which was based on those of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton back in the day.

It's expensive, but you get what you pay for in spades. I've always believed that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. I ain't swinging from any trees, either, though I did tell a Sherman cop who asked what my name was that I was Jane Goodall, a Biology major when he busted up a Phi Sig party back in the day.

Austin College has a student population of about 1,300 nerds just like me (and some a good deal smarter, since we graduate a lot of doctors and lawyers-to-be).

But enough of the sales pitch.

Austin College was where my little nerd heart was happiest. I go back to AC Homecoming as often as I can. It's fun to reconnect with everyone I knew back then. I can hold a conversation about my recently having learned to play Dungeons and Dragons with my fellow alumni, some of whom played football for us back in the 80s. Even the ex-jocks get what I'm talking about and have even educated me on some things about that game.

Our mascot--the kangaroo--is something only geeks like us get. We know how fierce those giant Australian "jackrabbits" really are. We can probably tell you habitat, breeding behavior, and all the different varieties of marsupials there are on the planet, all without Googling it because we know things for fun. It's who we are.

It was fun to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail with my fellow students in the Pub during my time there. Some even dressed up in costume and shouted all the lines along with the actors on the screen. It was like going to a geeky version of Rocky Horror Picture Show. We also knew that Graham Chapman graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge and St. Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College. It wasn't just humor; it was intelligent, surrealist humor. That is how we rolled.

Austin College is Nerdvana. It's hip to enjoy learning there. We were Hogwarts before there was a Hogwarts (I'm House Ravenclaw, which I think was Coffin Hall before they tore it down). We had die-hard Whovians (Dr. Who fans) before it was cool and one is an amazing and magical history professor out in California now. I was into Star Trek pretty hard (still am), but then who wasn't? I was rather mainstream in my nerdiness.

But pop culture sci-fi fandom isn't what makes AC great. It's the learning environment to which kids like me get off. Small classes. Personable professors. Students passionate about learning, even in elective classes. That thirst, that quest for more knowledge is a large part of what made--and makes--Austin College and its students special.

Texas, YES, TEXAS has one of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in the nation, and quite possibly the world, in Austin College. Perhaps I am biased. But having reconnected with my fellow AC alumni, I am moved by how many have made some pretty significant marks in the world, in some of the most unusual ways. And I arrived at that conclusion long before it was confirmed on the Old People's Social Network: Facebook.

I know I used the word nerd a lot, but as my father always said, "Nerd is a four-letter word for the kid that will grow up someday to be your boss."

Having been somebody's boss, as I am even now, I can attest to the truth of that statement.