Growing up in a certified Democratic union-belonging, Nixon-hating, ERA-lobbying household, I naturally cut my comic teeth on Doonesbury. My dad always had the latest (and not so latest) compendium lying around, and I’ve read and reread the complete set many times. I wrote one of my college application essays on Doonesbury, and was enough of a Fan that my parents wrangled me the following as a graduation present before I headed off to college:
Given this history, and the college noted on the inscription, you can imagine how tickled I’ve been by the story lines involving hipster geek Alex Doonesbury. After an on-line poll querying “Where should Alex go to college” was hacked by students from MIT, off to MIT she dutifully went. While plenty of us have griped about the portrayal of scientists in the media (and women in particular) — see Zuska’s recent snarkfest about CBS’s latest offering “The Big Bang” — I have to send out props to someone doing it right. In particular, I’m loving this week’s strips featuring hot chicks acing MIT while still acting like someone you’d like to know. Trudeau even suggests that geeks in high school can even have dates! Lots of them!
So thanks Gary!
June 1st, 2007 at 9:41 am
In the offices of The Tech, MIT’s oldest and largest newspaper, we used to hang up every Doonesbury strip in which Alex’s stepmother’s MIT career was mentioned. But they quickly became too numerous to keep that up.
June 1st, 2007 at 11:17 am
[...] Julianne at Cosmic Variance: Alex [...]
June 1st, 2007 at 12:15 pm
One of my favorites, in which Kim speaks only in zeroes and ones while staring intently at her computer screen, has the punchline “There’s nothing sexier than a girl geek on a big coding run.”
June 1st, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Cool! Can’t say enough good things about Doonesbury.
June 1st, 2007 at 9:09 pm
As another public schooled chick from Seattle who headed to MIT and hopefully remained someone you’d want to know, I share your delight with this story line!
June 2nd, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Wow, from just the post title on my RSS, I knew which Alex you meant!
June 2nd, 2007 at 10:28 pm
So far, this is my fav Alex@MIT strip. The punch line is superb.
Seems to me Alex is working through a case of Imposter Syndrome.