••• CLICK HERE FOR AMT234 •••
Let us progress from sixth form problems to problems that may emerge afterwards, as outlined in the following email from Tom:
I have just finished a Gap Year which involved 4 months’ travelling around southern Asia.
Personally, my travelling was the most informative, exciting and interesting thing I’ve ever done. However, now I’ve started university, nobody cares! All I want to do is talk about it, but then I sound like a massive Gap Yar Twat, but I can’t help but bring it up sometimes because there are so many stories.
Is there anyway I can be cool about it? I did go to Thailand for a week, but I wasn’t there to party, I’m not a ‘lad’ who just went and slept with prostitutes; I just went because I wanted to experience different things. How to get across that I’m not a lad, and that I’m not a post travel twat?
It’s curious that you think the only things people might be interested in are Thailand, specifically parties and prostitutes therein. If that is the case, why are you hanging out with such arseholes?
Anyway. You’re surrounded by new people, and you can’t expect them automatically to care about you or your holidays. Especially not if you start every sentence with, ‘Yeah, well when I was in Laos/Cambodia/Macao…’
If you want to do some stealth gap year bragging, choose some funny, self-deprecating stories, where something absurd, slapstick, or mildly humiliating occurred. If you know that the punchline to the anecdote is ‘It was really spiritual, actually’ then shelve it in favour of a story about you having to eat an unusual insect, or getting the shits.
Readers, please go to the comments to give Tom advice about humblebragging; and if you too have some gap year stories you’re bursting to tell, you’re welcome to add them there too. Because unlike fellow students, comments can’t glaze over.
Answer Me This! Podcast 
November 3, 2012 at 8:47 am |
My best friend had done pretty much everything before I met her, she’s also excellent at storytelling…even if you’ve heard them all before. She’s had good and bad times, but the point isn’t to brag, it’s to relay experience (usually calamities). In doing so, she’s really entertaining.
If you’re not a good storyteller, write a blog.
November 1, 2012 at 1:44 am |
Write down your stories. Get them out of you. Then you can dissipate both some of intensity of your feelings and the urge to spray your awakening all over other people.
October 31, 2012 at 6:42 pm |
Okay, as sort of a Gap Year Twat (GYT) myself who was surrounded by a lot of GYTs when I started university who have since become good friends, I believe I can help. Firstly, how did you afford your gap year? If Mummy and Daddy paid for it, resentment can set in early. Often stories about working a crappy jobs fruit picking can make you seem a lot more grounded and people will be more likely to feel that you earned and deserved your gap year and helping minimize the twattyness. Secondly, make sure you understand that you aren’t more interesting or special because of your trip to wherever. Being a twat comes from always wanting to talk about your stories, if you’re interesting, people will ask you about your gap year without you needing to sound like a twat.