As Graduation Speaker at Carnegie Mellon, Bill Cosby Makes Fun of Nerds

When you think of nerds, you most likely don't think of Bill Cosby. The legendary comedian has spent years making fun of anyone and everyone and Sunday was no different as Bill Cosby gave the keynote address at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Mr. Cosby began his speech in merciless teasing of the school's geeky population, saying that nerds can't even "stand in a room and look human."

As a Carnegie Mellon graduate, I know all too well what Bill's talking about. Not that I'm a nerd (of course not - those spreadsheets that I made up for my home purchase and wedding were just "tools" - that's all). But I knew nerds during my time at Carnegie Mellon. People who competed over who could spend the most time in the campus computer cluster, spending countless Saturday nights playing who-knows-what computer game or writing code just for the fun of it. People who walked in circles around a tree, over and over again (ok, that's probably not nerdy, just weird). Yes, I knew people who not only watched Star Trek, but lived for it.

Carnegie Mellon students are not just nerds, they are also on the cutting edge of all things nerdy. Email was just getting big when I went to Carnegie Mellon in the early 1990's. However, in 1993, one of my classmates had an "email beeper" so that he could be buzzed whenever a new message came in. This guy wasn't anyone special - he was just ahead of his time, like so many of my classmates were.

With that said, Mr. Cosby's speech to Carnegie Mellon's "nerds" was right on the mark. Students were treated to a "free" fifteen-minute show that ranged in a variety of topics (I say "free" because annual tuition for Carnegie Mellon is now above $33,000, so the show wasn't free by any means). Mr. Cosby told the geeks to be proud of being a nerd since it means that they "continued past where non-nerds stopped. That's not nerdy. I think it's very, very brave -- considering how many friends you lost. But, look at how many friends you gained."

He then managed to move past making fun of nerds (although he probably could have spent the whole fifteen minutes on that topic alone) and moved to family life, where he talked about college graduations as the only life event where people aren't fighting (with people overturning caskets at funerals and ripping dresses at weddings in Mr. Cosby's world). He also talked about how parents had dropped their kids off at Carnegie Mellon, hoping that they would become independent, but now "these people are taking you back."

Although "you don't have to be a nerd to disappoint people," his message to students was simple: "Don't talk yourself into not being you. Be sure of yourselves, be proud. But you can't be proud and you can't carry it out unless you are sure of yourself and prepared. That's where the nerds stand tall!" Hopefully my fellow Carnegie Mellon alumni and nerds everywhere heard this message loud and clear yesterday.

C.M. Paulson is a freelance writer based in Pittsburgh, PA. In addition to receiving her MBA from the University of Pittsburgh's Katz School of Business , Ms. Paulson received a Mechanical Engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon University and is proud to be a "CMU nerd."

Sources: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Cosby urges CMU nerds to 'accept themselves'

Pittsburgh Tribune Review - Cosby lauds CMU's 'nerds'