10 tips for an awesome SDCC experience

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by @geekgirls

My geekguy and I went to our first San Diego Comic-Con in 2007 and we were so not prepared. I mean, I knew that the convention center was big and there would be a lot of people attending, but I didn’t understand the scale of “big” and “a lot” until I was actually standing there. Although we caught on pretty quickly, we missed a lot.

In order to ensure you have the best comic-con experience possible, here is a list of lessons learned from my first trip. This list is also intended for the true fangirl, not for the quazi-fangirl-eye-candy-who-datas-geeks-and-thinks-she-knows-spiderman-because-she-watched-the-movie-girl. So in the spirit of @geekgirldiva’s An Open Letter to the L.A. Times from a Geek Girl  and @loquaciousmuse’s The Real Girl’s Guide to SDCC, here are my top 10 tips for the comic-con girl:

Is a Tweep a Real Friend?

by @geekgirls

I often find myself defending using the word friend when referring to a twitter user. I converse with many of the same people online everyday and hadn’t realize that I replaced the word tweep with friend some time ago.

I began to question whether or not these twitterers could in fact be considered my friends or if I was taking this internet social platform too seriously. So, like any good geek girl, I decided to analyze the meaning of the word friend.

Evolution of the GEEK – How we became Hip

by @lauraklotz

As recently as a century ago, the term geek referred to sideshow circus performers whose job it was to entertain the crowd by biting the heads off of live chickens or bats.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

The etymology of the word dates back to the old English or Low German word geck, meaning ‘freak.’  According to the relevant article at Wikipedia, the definition of geek has evolved over time to the point where it no longer has a definitive meaning.  It frequently gets classed with words that have similar definitions, such as nerd or dork, and they have all been known to be used in a derogatory fashion.

However, over the last several years, the geeks of the world have been revealing themselves in great numbers, taking back the word for themselves and applying it in a positive light. 

Surviving as a Scientist: Ruminations of a Geek Girl Scholar

By @ArkhamAsylumDoc

 

I am not supposed to be a psychologist.

 

In college, I was a computer science major and math geek.  I was drawn to the clear-cut, straightforward—and, dare I say—binary approaches to problem-solving. If there were a fail-proof algorithm for choosing toothpaste brand, I would employ it.  So how did I end up studying the most nebulous subject: human behavior?   

There is a GEEK inside us all

By @spaltor

The summer I was born, my sister was 17 and headed off to college, and my brother was 13, preparing to enter high school.  My parents had very busy schedules, and a lot of the “babysitting” duties fell to my brother.  He wasn’t always so pleased about it, as 13 year old boys tend to have their own ideas about how to best use their time.  So, from an extremely early age, I went wherever he wanted to go.  And when I was less than a month old, where he wanted to go was to the movie theater to see “Return of the Jedi” for the umpteenth time.  An infant in a movie theater?  Not always a good plan.  But the story goes that I was mesmerized by the movie.  My brother says that I sat propped up on his lap, and stared at the movie screen for the entire 134 minutes.  And, if you believe that, thus began my love of science-fiction.