Most of you know I’m a nerd. That’s no secret. I’ve blogged about my nerdy thing where I (almost) always go to class, and you could probably figure out that I’m one of those obnoxious people who loves, loves, LOVES school and school supply shopping and learning and flashcards. You can Google me and just laugh at all the nerdy things I did in high school sometime when you’re bored. If that wasn’t enough, one time I blogged about my love for the Parliamentarium.

I don’t know if you know that I’m also a geek.

I’m kind of ashamed of my geekdom, actually, but I can’t deny it anymore. I am a raging geek. I didn’t just watch every Star Wars movie—I read a substantial number of alternate universe Star Wars books (what up Timothy Zahn!!), owned the Star Wars encyclopedia, played with Star Wars action figures in my dollhouse, and can discuss Han Solo and Leia Organa-Skywalker’s children with you at length. Don’t get me started on Mara Jade.

It’s not just Star Wars or sci fi, either. I’m a geek about just about everything and have been from an early age. I spend my free time reading message boards and stalking actors on IMDB and editing Wikipedia and yes, reading fanfiction. Stop judging me. It’s like how you’re on Team Edward or Team Peeta, but instead of t-shirts, I have the entire Internet.

In other words, I’m super lame. I know this about myself. I mean, what am I, a thirteen-year-old Ben Wyatt? Or a miniature version of my father, who watched Star Trek or History Channel every. single. night. of my childhood?…oh, I totally come by this honestly; I feel much better now.

(Sorry, Daddy. You are the kind of geek that feeds and clothes me and pays for my college education, and I’m going to get you an awesome Father’s Day gift, I promise, LOVE YOU.)

In my defense, I have passable social abilities and several marketable skills. Also, I’m totally awesome at knowing which piece of cutlery to use at formal dinner parties. People are all, “Look at that appropriately-dressed lady, using the appropriate fork to eat her beet and spinach salad. And eating her dinner roll like she looked it up in Miss Manners! What a wonderful contributing member to society.” In other words, you really can stop judging me now because I could hurt you with the salad, entrée, and dessert forks in the correct order.

So, anyway, the other day, I was mentally cataloging my geekdom because that is what we geeks do: we mentally catalog things. Star Wars fan—check. Seen multiple episodes of Star Trek, including multiple movies—check. Own several t-shirts from ThinkGeek.com—check. And that’s when I realized it: I wasn’t a Doctor Who fan.

How can you be a geek and not watch Doctor Who? It’s the consummate geek show. It’s been running on BBC for years and years, but it was recently (in the 2000s) revived, and I totally ignored it. I’m not sure how. My high school Latin teacher is obsessed with Doctor Who—we watched the Pompeii episode my freshman year, and he used to play episodes during my independent study senior year, which I ignored to translate The Aeneid because I am a gigantic nerd. Everyone on my dorm floor freshman year is obsessed with Doctor Who. My roommate’s alarm clock plays the Doctor Who theme song. Our engineering department built a TARDIS on campus, and I recognized the awesomeness. One of my best friends is named Tegan, for heaven’s sake.

Here is Tegan with the TARDIS. That is a sentence that you don’t get to type every day:

Despite all this, I totally missed the Doctor Who boat. I suppose I was too caught up in trying to deny that I am both a gigantic nerd and a gigantic geek and somewhat refused to watch the show.

But, once again, study abroad saved me.

I’m going to Rome in May, and I plan to go to Pompeii because I am obsessed with it. I know that Ostia is closer and cooler and that Pompeii is something of a tourist trap, but I studied Pompeii for years in high school, so I am GOING, GOSHDARNIT. After I booked my plane ticket (that sentence still makes me giddy), I started to get really antsy to go, so I decided that what I really needed was to rewatch the Pompeii episode of Doctor Who that my Latin teacher showed me five years ago.

Natch. This is what my brain is like all the time. The weird connections I make are absolutely exhausting, I’m telling you. That’s why I sleep so long.

So, I’m watching this show, and I’m all, “These special effects are terrible. Do they actually expect me to believe—OH MY GOD OKAY WHAT IS HAPPENING WHAT WHAT WHAT” and then, before I knew it, I was in love. Doctor Who is clearly the greatest show ever with the greatest leads ever with the greatest premise ever.

David Tennant and Catherine Tate, alwriiight?

I’ve been watching Doctor Who in my downtime (read: when I cannot handle writing 6,500 words on transphobia in Brazilian film, which is pretty much always). I’m kind of hooked. I’m forever forgetting the time difference and texting my friends things like:

WHAT THE ACTUAL HECK DOES RORY HAVE GROWING ON HIS HEAD?!

and

You guys, can I please just be River Song when I grow up? Without the prison sentence? And maybe lower heels.

and

Hi hope your spring break is going well we’re making a TARDIS for our living room next semester.

I recently got to the episode about van Gogh. (Side note: apparently, Americans say his name wrong, and it should be like “fan hoff” or something.) It was the most intense/awesome episode EVER. Go watch it right now. If you don’t already love awkward gingers, it will make you love awkward gingers. Which is an important part of life, I think.

Off I headed to Amsterdam to the Van Gogh/Fan Hoff Museum! My supa sweet museumkaart gets me in for free, so I just had to pay 14 euros for my train ticket. Rock on, right? We also got to skip the miles-long line. I may have danced meanly past everyone once I figured that out.

Sasha and I went to the Van Gogh museum after the Anne Frankhuis, and it was a much happier note on which to end the day. I loved this museum. It’s cleverly designed and contains not only Van Gogh works but also works from similar, important artists. We went from the top of the museum down, so we ended with Van Gogh’s work. I’d recommend that approach because that way everything builds up to something else, just like in a good Doctor Who episode.

Speaking of Doctor Who, I was extremely amused to note that Van Gogh painted people wearing both Stetsons and fezzes, presumably because they’re COOL.

Seeing Van Gogh’s work in person absolutely blew me away. It’s phenomenal. I’m not a super big fan of art museums, but there’s really something awesome about seeing something in person that you’ve seen so often in books. It’s even cooler when that thing is so famous that it gets parodied. You just sort of feel a part of history. You see Van Gogh’s brushstrokes, and you think, “Wow, if I wanted to get arrested, I could touch the exact same thing that Van Gogh touched.” I felt very cool, educated, and sophisticated, which is kind of a foreign feeling. I like it. I’m off to Paris next month, and I’m definitely going to see the Louvre and Musee d’Orsay (where they filmed this Doctor Who episode in question, not that I’m going there for that. Or just for that, anyway) in order to recreate this non-sarcastically-classy lady feeling.

So, you see, happy ending to this tale. Geeky girl goes and does something cultural related to geek culture, and we all live happily ever after.

Wow, that was a terribly constructed cliché of a conclusion. I clearly shouldn’t get clever in Latin…or English.

(If you understood that little reference, we can be friends. If not, I’d explain it, but SPOILERS, sweetie!

I’m done now.

Really.)