A friend who 'talks the talk' but doesn't 'walk the walk'

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Hey,

I've got a friend who is under a lot of pressure from his mum and his relatives to study, work hard and study medicine. He's an okay friend but there are some characteristics about him that are really starting to get on my nerves:

* Always tries to give off the impression that he's more academic than anyone else, such as saying comments like: "Don't be afraid to read over the whole textbook over the summer holidays", "I was really inspired by this" and, "I've got a lot of work to do" as well as other comments to try and imply, "Look at me, I'm Mr Academic."
* I know that these comments are perfectly valid, but he's only reciting them from what his mum tells him, since he's under a lot of pressure. The way he says these comments indicates that he's clearly overcompensating for the fact that he just doesn't have it. However, I know some people who are fairly quiet but get on with the work and get very good grades!
* He doesn't get very high results in classes (he's got quite a few C-U grades in schoolwork) and always tries to make other people feel bad when he doesn't succeed (e.g. when I was in pairs with him for Chemistry and when we did an experiment, he accidentally left a piece of apparatus closed, ruining the experiment, so he rather childishly started fiddling with another pair's gas taps. )
* When I've invited him over or if he's in a social occasion, he's always ridiculously late (e.g. when I invited him over to my house at midday, he turned up at 2 o'clock! ) He was also about 45 minutes late to my birthday get-together, which I found very disrespectful.
* He's got some other childish elements about him; after our Start of Year 12 Physics test, I was worried about mine, and he said "I made you look like an idiot!" In that test, he got a U and I got an A!

Do any of you know somebody like this who can talk the talk but can't just walk the walk? I feel as if this friend can be okay at times but I want to break away from him in the most subtle way possible. I sometimes think that my tolerance to crap from people is probably a bit too high. Is there any advice for this situation that you can give? It would be greatly appreciated.

He sounds like a strong candidate for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. This is the speculation of an amatuer psychologist who knew a girl in her teens who exhibited very similar behaviour.

I don't know if it's Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but he definitely needs to be a better friend to you. You deserve better then that, some of his comments are rather demeaning to you. Maybe I'm biased though, I have a "friend" right now that is putting me down so she feels better.

It probably won't be that easy if you're in his class at school and so forced to be around him all the time. Maybe just don't bother to contact him outside school and make excuses if he wants to meet up. He might suspect that you just don't want him as a friend anymore if you do employ those tactics though.