Columns
MORADI | Tell Me About Yourself
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On the first few episodes of ABC’s The Bachelor, when the eponymous character needs to quickly get to know a woman during a cocktail party before deciding whether to kick her out of his romance mansion, he often resorts to a routine command: “Tell me about yourself.” It’s an unsettling and somewhat existential prompt, right up there with “What’s a fun fact about yourself?” though not nearly as awful. (Thank goodness we’ve more or less been removing “fun facts” from the zeitgeist.) And yet, we still have to answer it on interviews, dates, The Bachelor and, worst of all, the first discussion section of the year. I recently re-read the email I sent to the list of fellow first-year spring admits two years ago, where I attempted to sound cool and interesting and ultimately tell these strangers “about myself.” I said I was interested in politics and in my free time I was “usually reading, succumbing to a Netflix binge or excessively snapchatting,” which was all true, I guess, but somewhat grim in retrospect. Watching Netflix and using Snapchat does not a particularly interesting person make, and it sure doesn’t tell you anything “about” that person either. No braggies, but I do things that are more fulfilling than just watching TV or using social media — I’m just extraordinarily embarrassed to announce them to my discussion section or list them in a Twitter bio.