Not a humblebrag- why I hide the fact that I went to elite schools (2014)

Re:Not a humblebrag- why I hide the fact that I went to elit... by matthewaveryusa on Thursday April 18, 2019 @10:58PM (#19696758)

No one cares you went to Yale, they're just being polite and trying to be engaging. If you make it weird, you're making it weird not them. E.i: If someone asks what school you went to, tell them and ask where they went and try to find common experiences. Not hard, just regular social skills and psychology 101 -- the more you make someone talk about thenlm the less you're talking about you.

I get it, I grew up in France and people always latched on to that fact when meeting me. Frankly I found it bizarre when I moved here (who cares where you grew up, and France isn't that exotic anyways imho.) What I realized is that most of the time they don't want to talk about my France -- they want to talk about their European experiences traveling/studying

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Not a humblebrag- why I hide the fact that I went to elit... by pesmhey on Thursday April 18, 2019 @11:50PM (#19696967)

Yeah, I went through a phase where I’d be hyper-aware if talking about elite or exotic things with people. It’s pretty patronizing, that I or anyone would think that the other person couldn’t handle the conversation or something, when most people would just think ‘oh cool!’ and then try to find as much common ground with you as you do with them.

It’s born out of insecurity. So now I definitely mention anything about myself, and appreciate that other people do the same.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Not a humblebrag- why I hide the fact that I went to elit... by mikekchar on Thursday April 18, 2019 @11:05PM (#19696787)

> No one cares you went to Yale

This is not entirely true. People from Yale care (generally speaking). You can actually leverage connections with people who went to the same school and who think that it made a difference to them.

Speaking as someone who came from an obscure school this surprised me when I noticed it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Not a humblebrag- why I hide the fact that I went to elit... by matthewaveryusa on Friday April 19, 2019 @11:35AM (#19700407)

absolutely -- that's the 'finding common experiences' part of social skills I was referring to. If two people went to different schools but were both on the fencing team you can leverage that in the same way you can leverage that you went to the same alma mater.

[ Parent | on HN ]