A big step in life is realizing that everyone around you has a designated label that you associate them with. Whether it’s jock, “mathlete”, political geek, being a member of the dance team, being an EECS student, etc., it’s easy to get caught up in the ways that people we know fulfill their stereotypes instead of the ways they deviate from them. These labels, or boxes as I like to think of them as, affect everyone including ourselves. When you get trapped in a box it’s difficult to make anyone see you for who you are outside of who you are in that space. And by now as we’re all nearing real adulthood, you would think it would be easier to note that not everyone is so easily defined by one coin term or action.
And the sad thing is that no one really thinks about it anymore; we’re basically just accepting that we fit the characteristics of this box and we’re allowing ourselves to be defined in this way. In a space where you don’t know who you are, you can easily pick and choose the personality characteristics of the people who you spend the most time with. But, at the same time these are characteristics that are inside of a box and they are ones that might not fully be you. You can lose yourself when you fall into this box, and you can lose those bits of individuality that draw people to who you really are. It’s not bad to be a part of a community, but it is bad to let this community be all-encompassing.
It’s easy to act like you know everything about a person from one meeting, but it’s likely that there’s a whole lifetime of someone that you have missed just from making a split judgment. In the same way, someone may see you once and assume they know who you are from this first impression. It’s important to not allow yourself to be defined by first impressions. People have described their first impressions of meeting me later on in our friendship, and more often than not they are completely incorrect in their reading of me. You could meet someone once and not like them based off of that first meeting, but it’s important to remember that 1) you don’t know anything about them as a person actually, and 2) everyone has off days so maybe in the future you could meet them at the right time and they could be your type of person.
We often get caught up in not giving people second chances because we don’t understand them and we don’t want to give them an opportunity to be understood. Sometimes you think you know exactly the kind of people and friends you need in your life, so you may not even give a new person a chance to be in your world. But in the reverse of this situation, you may need to go out of your way to let others understand you if they have left you in your box. Push yourself out of that box and make it apparent to those you want to connect with that you are more than a label or a title.
Despite all of my spirals and examples, the real truth behind these words is that college is one of the only chances you have to meet this large of a variety of people, and it’s one of the only times you have to make connections with people who you would normally have ignored had you seen only who they were on the surface. So while you should never allow yourself to be considered as a member of a box and that box alone, you should also know not to place anyone else in a box either. Let everyone have the opportunity to surprise you.