To Be Perceived as Not Bragging, Focus on the Effort to Get There, Not the Output

This blog started in 2010 to chart my life out of four tumultuous years as a student at Yale University. Those four years were at times traumatizing and left me with emotional scars that, at times, led me to conclude the very worth of going to Yale in the first place. The struggles of not only classes at a high level, but the social expectations of Yale students all being future leaders, lead to pressures to succeed in professional and academic ways that many, including myself, were not mentally prepared for. Some students excelled in such pressurized environments, while many others lost their ways.

Yet, for those who have never been in a top global educational institution, downplaying the Yale experience can leave a negative impression. They often cannot understand that being in a school like Yale, while certainly glamorous for those outside it, can be difficult for those inside. Instead, when hearing about Ivy Leaguers complaining about their lives in what can only be described as the most prestigious academic environments in the world, others merely see Ivy Leaguers as "humblebragging," using stories of difficulties to boast about personal achievements.

I cannot deny that an Ivy League education has paid dividends, even though I did not go into what many consider to be the conventional professional route after graduation. While many of my peers earned stable, above-average salaries working in finance, IT, law, or medicine, I found myself globetrotting as a career, trekking through the depth of rural Tanzania, suburban Southeast Asia, the Japanese corporate world, and beyond. To qualify for these jobs, I had to be professionally experienced. But there is no doubt that my educational background also played a massive role in suggesting my intellectual fit.

As such, when talking about my background, it is often important to acknowledge that it has indeed been extremely helpful for me to go through my top-level higher level education, but it is never as straightforward as what many believe, that going to a good school is equated to guaranteed ways to succeed professionally. Striking a balance between disclosing my academic fortune and highlighting the many different adversities associated with it can go a long way to help others not overexaggerate the importance of high-quality education.

Finding that balance is especially important when speaking to high school students facing external pressure to excel academically. Many do not have the self-confidence they need to even try applying to the best universities in the world, much less think about what happens after that. Feeding them information about the achievements of graduates from the world's best universities often only adds to their anxieties. They face enough pressure from their parents, teachers, and community to do whatever they can to join the educated elite of the world. We shouldn't add any more to what they already have.

Instead of talking about academic achievements then, it might be best that we focus on what came before the results. Every Yale student was, years earlier, a normal child, with anxieties about the unknowns that the future can bring. Many, like me, faced enormous but mundane difficulties in everyday life, such as not being able to get along with their peers, being distracted from their studies by their family and friends, and just not feeling like they can or want to become anything in particular when they grow up. These issues are universal, linking together high school students of today and those of the past that achieved great things since their high school days.

Resonating on the commonalities of mutual adversities allows for conversations on what really matters: how to utilize those adversities for the sake of figuring out concrete directions in one's academic and professional careers. Of course, high school students should not be expected to already know what they want to do in the decades ahead, but at the very least, those who succeeded expended some effort in thinking about this issue and acting upon it to some degree. They may not have concrete set answers, but many have impressed universities and future employers with activities they undertook to think about the future.

In other words, to ensure that the academically and professionally successful are not seen as humblebraggers by "normal" people, they should skim over their achievements and instead focus on the long and difficult roads they took to get there. The high-achievers need to emphasize that they were not born high achievers. Instead, they often struggled mentally, in the same ways that everyone has experienced. But rather than just sulk about their situations, they always strived to do something new and interesting, searching for concrete answers that do not seem to always be within their grasp. "Doing something," then, should become the lasting messages to communicate, especially to youths with their whole lives ahead.