Geekiness

[mdlbear]

...does not appear to be hereditary. Odd. After several years I finally persuaded chaoswolf to try a computer course, in this case "Intro to Unix". We were going over the "script" for the third lab when I realized that I was just feeding her the lines -- she had no understanding at all of what she was doing. At that time I told her to research the commands she needed; pointed her at the man pages and a couple of beginners' books and suggested that she play around a little until she knew what she was doing.

Instead, what happened is that she turned off completely, did nothing, and is now dropping the course.

It's not as if she isn't a geek! She's an avid gamer -- she can handle arcane manuals, weird rules, and critters with funny names and dozens of bizarre special-case options. But she doesn't see the computer that way; it scares and confuses her. I think that if she'd gotten interested on her own, she would have enjoyed it immensely. It may be too late for that now that she's convinced herself that she "can't understand that command-line stuff".

Comments

[patoadam]

I'm not sure Intro to Unix is the best choice for a first computer course. The importance of Unix, which is obvious to you, may not be so obvious to someone who experiences computers via GUIs and doesn't realize what is underneath.

Web page design or programming may be better starting points.

[mdlbear]

Likely; this was the course that fit her schedule and that she wanted to take.