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I survived school by "dumbing down" and becoming part of semipopular fringe group that was not comprised of nerds. Being female, it was even HARDER to fit in as an intelligent person. I think a lot of us dumbed down to fit in somewhere, although I went to a fairly upscale urban high school where some intelligence was valued, but not as much as money...
Unfortunately, sometimes I was exposed by the teachers. One the day the geometry teacher told everyone I was the only person in all his years of teaching geometry who scored 100 on the 1st quarter final. (part of the reason for that was that I was fairly naive to repercussions of appearing too smart!) Need less to say, the results were different for next 3 quarters' tests.
It was more important for me to be popular with some group than seem too smart. Although my close girlfriends knew I was smarter than they were, they really didn't know how much smarter. This was my way of protecting myself from being ostracized by my social in group.
Fortunately I could be a closet nerd at home. My folks never pushed me to make good grades and I was free to be interested in anything I wanted to be since I was not allowed to have friends over (my Mom worked fulltime and didn't want more kids around than three of us). I grew up in the 60s and not having a fulltime mother was an anomaly in itself.
In retrospect, it's too bad that I had to hide my intelligence from my friends-- I am not friends with any of them anymore. All of my long term friends I made in college, where my intelligence was valued by fellow students.
I hope that my young grandson who is both an athlete and a nerd at 9 will have a better opportunity to enjoy nboth his athletic abilities and his intelligence and interest in "nerdy" things as he grows up.
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