Anna+L’s+2018+OpEd+Article



**ARE YOU REALLY THOUGH? ** I am an adamant believer in that all sophistication of words is always sacrificed to the impediment of inaction. Of course, sometimes people, including myself, occasionally brag when something pleasing or advantageous happens, but every time I encounter people who incessantly self-promote or “humble-brag” behind the humility cloak for everything that EVER happens, I can feel the blood boiling in my arteries.



My friend of nearly 12 years is a very fascinating person, and we get along quite well. Everything about this friend’s personality is ideal, except for one detail - nearly 94% of the words that come out of her mouth are associated with how fantastic she thinks she is. Every time we meet each other, all of my remarks about my life are accompanied by 5 or so iterations of her self-affirmed superiority in academics or how every male in Ventura flirts with her. Frankly, this has vexed me to the point where I just refrain from ever mentioning anything about my life to her. To be brutally honest, it sucks to suck and trying to compensate for that by bragging about the same thing over and over is like expecting a flea squished under a piece of gum lying on the sidewalk to jump to the top of the Empire State Building.

Probably even worse than boasting about some elusive achievements is pretending to be humble while doing i t. “Oh my god, I hate that all these random colleges are sending me so many postcards, I can’t believe what a lucky shot my high SAT score was.” Honestly, no one CARES! I have met numerous people with this same mentality - that their “lucky shot” scores and all of their irrelevant college postcards that are delivered to probably more than half of high school students in the United States are going to ensure their admission to college and their success in life. I apologize for bursting their cozy little bubbles, but there is so much more to college admissions (and life in general) then getting a good score on standardized tests and then attempting to look like a multifaceted and intelligent person by flaunting it.

As James Dunn for Daily Mail Online writes, “if you want people to have a high opinion of you the key is not to tell them how brilliant you are.” People who underestimate or overestimate how people will react often by their presence often resort to bragging in a futile attempt to make themselves more interesting. Andirudh Agrawal on Quora described this as “an empty can with a marble, rumbling and tumbling and making a bloody irritating noise!”

Everyone brags in moderation, and there is nothing problematic with that. It’s interesting to hear about a college acceptance, a new project, or other interesting things that happen to people. But when bragging becomes unstoppable like a chronic disease, it becomes really, really irritating. People who enjoy bragging need to step off of their high horses and understand that much more favorable attributes to a person are sincerity and genuine humility.