First Impressions

First Impressions

   Above is a picture of me, Sariah Amin. But that is just a picture of me in a particular moment. The picture is not a real life, real time representation of me. The picture does not describe my voice, my body language, or my personality. It does not tell you how recent the picture is. Basically, what you are looking at is what I want to show you. You, the viewer and reader, do not know weather it is a real, recent or accurate picture of me. 

    Plenty of people say the simple phrase, ‘never judge a book by its cover’, or ‘first impressions are not always right’, when they talk about meeting someone new for the first time. But are these phrases really that simple? While it is easy to immediately judge someone based on how they dress themselves up, how they speak, what they say and how they act, should we only concentrate on that initial impression or should we allow time to get to really know a person before making a full decision on their character and their involvement in your life? At what point, even, do you really know a person? How can one tell when the first impression is correct? These questions are really important to answer truthfully  when you are bringing someone new into your life.  While I do think that it takes a while and a lot of time spent together to really know/ understand a person, I also believe that the initial impression you have of someone is usually the correct one. 

    I have anecdotal evidence that I want to share with you, that the first impression is usually correct. I was a freshmen in high school and it was about the second week in school. I had just had a schedule change and so I walked into my new English classroom for the first time. I took a quick glance around the very full room of mostly unfamiliar adolescent faces and stopped at a blond haired girl. It was a very big high school and even though I knew many people from my previous school years, many were also very new to me. This blond girl my eyes stopped on was one of the new people to me. She was a tall girl with very gentle features. I can't remember what our first conversation was or what she was wearing on that first day, but I can say that I knew at a subconscious  level that she was a nice girl. So I took my backpack and I shuffled over to a chair that was as close to her as possible. 

After class, I got to know her a little better and was happy to find that we connected right away. We found we had similar interests in clothes, guys, movies and music. Plus, we were both just really good at holding a conversation with each other. Our conversations just naturally flowed with not a lot of effort on either of our parts to keep it going. We were also both pretty shy girls in class (by shy for myself, I mean I barely spoke a word in class. Ever), and we immediately took a liking for each other on that feature alone. I was so happy to have found a nice girl to friend on that first day of my new English class. For a while, everything seemed to be great. The friendship was strong and we were happy. That is, until our teen angst kicked in a little further into the school semester. 

We got into an argument over a little debate we were having about when it is appropriate for kids and teens to be censored from violent and/ or obscene topics. We were both set on the fact that we were right and neither of us would back down from our standpoints. Although we were both soft spoken, quiet kids by nature, we did get into a very deep and lengthy debate. We did not exchange mean words and we never got into a fight, that is just not in our nature. Neither of us, however, would take a moment to see the other's perspective. Our argument was so civil it lasted the entire class period without our teacher having to intervene. After school was over I began to rethink everything that had been said in that English classroom and I began to rethink why I had liked this girl to begin with. I started to question my first impression of her. I began to think that maybe I had had a lapse in judgement and that I should not be friends with a person who does not even try to see my perspective. 

While I was upset that she did not agree with or even listen to my points during that fateful English class debate, I could not help but think that maybe we had both just overreacted. As the evening wound on I began to realize that I had not really listened to or try to understand where she was coming from with her points either. I began to think of the first day I had met her again, and how we had got along so easy and so well. Perhaps, I thought that night, I had let my emotions and desire to be right to get in the way of the nice person I had found in her just a few weeks prior. The next day I got up, determined not let the previous days debate  get in the way of my talking to her. After sleeping on it, I knew that I had wanted to talk to her for a reason on that first day of school. I knew that I should at least try to salvage the friendship since we had gotten along so well before.

I got to school the next day and I can't even tell you who spoke first or who apologized for overreacting first. All I know is that after a few moments of light talking, we got along all over again as if nothing had upset us the previous day at all. We realized that we had just gotten excited in the heat of the moment. That we let our desire to be right and heard get the better of our friendship. Since that debate as 9th graders in high school, we have been best friends ever since. We still laugh once in a while about that heated high school debate. We still think about this because we both learned that day that our first impressions of each other is what saved our friendship from that censorship debate. 

People, by nature, are intuitive to qualities of people that may not be evident at face value. The essence of a person is not necessarily something you can see or touch, yet people are able to pick up on those not so evident qualities. We may or may not be aware of that natural intuition while it's happening. Being conscious of how we feel around people we meet for the first time comes with practice and I think it is a good thing to be aware of whenever you meet anybody. Whether it is the first time you hang out with a new friend or go on a first date, those subtle feelings and impressions you get when you first meet someone are important to listen to because it is  your body’s way of telling you if the chemistry between you both is correct for compatibility. First impressions, after all, are largely based off of who you are as a person. Your body’s chemistry picks up on those little details that show you if another person's chemistry is able to exist with yours. My anecdote above will hopefully at least help people become thoughtful about their initial thoughts and impressions of people they meet. They will think twice about the things they notice in initially  meeting a person. They will see if first impression qualities are things they are compatible or non- compatible with. If it is a good first impression, it is those good qualities you pick up on that will keep the relationship together, even through tough times.