Queen of the nerds.

Today I got back from the annual American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) meeting in Boston, a bacchanalian feast of new knowledge, new technology, new cases, new unknown diagnoses and overall cool stuff.

Every two to three years there is a new "theme", in DC it was genome wide association studies (GWAS) and EVERYBODY was presenting their findings. This year the prevailing theme was whole exome sequencing (WES) which was used over and over and over again for finding new genes and while it is always cool to find new stuff after the first few presentations it was like, duh!! and frankly it got a little repetitive. On top of it all, VERY little clinical information was presented to tell us clinicians what to look for so that is disappointing. The take home message this year was: until you have money to do exomes on a regular basis you will continue to be stuck with puzzles you cannot solve.

The other great part of this meeting is the reunion of colleagues, people from all over the world that you have at some point been in contact with and you don't get to see regularly - all nerds like you, trolling the halls of the convention center, getting excited about genetics and talking science. How cool is THAT?

So it got me thinking: How nerdy can one be among the nerds? Well, here are a few of the excessively nerdy things that would put one in the Queen of the nerds category.

1) You make sure you got dressed up everyday JUST in case you happen to unexpectedly run into Karl Deisseroth because you are his number 1 groupie.

2) You sit there during lunch and gawk at Genetic celebrities and legends who walk by like normal people would at an LA celebrity tour.

3) You walk by a group of people meeting during lunch and overhear "How bad was the macrocephaly?" and you secretly hope you could sit at their table and join the discussion.

4) You curse the organizer who scheduled two cool presentations at the same time.

5) You avoid all population genetics lectures because that is where the REAL nerds hang out.

6) You make sure to find the most efficient way to get from one lecture hall to the other without missing the start of the presentation.

7) You consider buying the new edition of the Smith book but then start looking through it and recognize EVERY picture while saying "that was in the old one" and realize there is not much they have added so it not worth the moola.

8) You sit there and gasp in awe when JB Lawrence talks about Xist and trisomy 21 while getting goose bumps despite having read her paper a few times before and then make sure you LEAD the standing ovation.

I think I qualify for the title, Queen of the Nerds!!!!