STUDENT WRITING: Reflective Essay: FIRST IMPRESSIONS by LAILA ALSAIHATI

“When I first saw you, I thought you were arrogant. Therefore, I never thought of talking to you as a friend,” one of my friend’s friends said to me.

In the court of life, it is normal to get judged by others. You don’t have to be a plaintiff in order to get judged by others, they will judge you even if you are the judge himself. A person has to be like a lawyer to survive in this court. People judge others by their height, their features, and their appearance. If a woman is walking with high heels, it means she is looking for attention, wearing red lipstick means she is in love, and holding a Burberry bag means she’s rich.

There is always a reason for everything that God does. God creates us with different shapes, different morals and different prints! All of this has its meaning under what’s called physiognomy, psychology, and parapsychology. People who study this will know how to explain why this person’s nose is long and how this affects his manners, or why that person’s tone of voice is soft. However, people who don’t, judge people by how they look.

I’ve always walked with confidence; head up, shoulders down with straight steps. Exactly like my father whom I have always admired. My father is an outgoing and independent person who sees himself from his perspective first. He always thinks and holds himself accountable. He tells me, “My smart girl, always think about your mistakes before anybody else does and bear in mind that if you want to be successful, trust God in what he teaches us, examine yourself in how well you do what God teaches you in his holy book, and apply that not only in a religious way but also in how you treat yourself and others.” Some people have thought that I look down my nose at them. Others have thought I have no decency. I’ve been judged a lot and not just because of the way I walk, but also because of how I look. I have a sharp look that makes some people think that I’m cocky and stony-hearted although I smile a lot. Also, when I talk about something serious I act realistically, so people think that I’m a humorless person. From my perspective, I think a person should joke when it’s time to joke and appreciate a person when he talks about something serious and needs for the person he is confiding in to take things seriously. I remember when people have told me after they sit with me that they thought wrong about me, and I reply, “Now, you know.” When people tell me that, I try to see it from their perspective. Therefore, I think if there is something wrong with the way I look and I end up by finding the fact that I did nothing wrong, I don’t look at people disdainfully, I don’t frown upon them, and I absolutely don’t raise an eyebrow to anyone.

I have a friend who has never seen me. One day I was talking to her and I asked, “Maram, what did you think of me the first time we talked?” She said “I thought that you had a strong balanced personality.” The reason why I asked her was because I wanted to know what her first impression of me was since she had never seen me at all. Of course, she wasn’t going to tell me awful things, but I asked because I know how honest and upright a person she was. After that, I was convinced that the problem was the sharpness in my eyes, which I have nothing to do with. I’m not a rebellious, nasty, grubby person. I don’t despise people, but the thing is I love myself! I honestly don’t care about what people say about me because what I think about people who judge others like that is that they are simple, small-minded, uneducated, and unaware persons.

I’ve studied parapsychology so I know that outsides and personalities are two sides of one coin. Parapsychology has opened my mind to a lot of different things. Parapsychology looks beyond what people think and what people usually nourish their souls with. When I combine what my father told me, what I’ve studied, and what I have learned in life from my experiences, I think that I may be qualified to make a good first-impression judgment of people especially because I studied parapsychology. I can tell by a person’s manners, just by looking at him, hearing his voice, or feeling his aura. I know that parapsychology isn’t considered a science internationally, but I got a degree in it and I believe in it.

I’m known for two important things. The first thing is that I’m a perfectionist. The first time I heard this word in English was when a teacher described me as such. Teacher Robert told me, “You are a perfectionist,” so I asked him, “Is this a good thing?” I went home that day and translated the word. It turned out that a lot of people described me with this word before. I admit that I am a perfectionist. It is, also, important to me to get to know the people whom I meet for the first time well, so I can decide whether I can count on them in my life or not. However, I’m also known for giving chances. I will give a person a couple of chances by seeing how he acts in different situations before I judge him because even though I know how to judge with my experience in parapsychology, that doesn’t mean that I’ll get it right every time. I don’t want to be stuck with somebody whom I can’t communicate with in my life because I see him as a bad person. I care about my comfort and if it turns out that this person that I just met is somehow hard to live with, I will for sure put at least red lines in my relationship with him and be careful how I spend my time with him.

This court is as all the courts in the world, but it has its unlimited rules. Sometimes, people can make mistakes in it without going to jail because their mistakes aren’t considered crimes as in a normal court of law. Crimes in the court of life can be in people’s hearts by thinking wrong about others, suspecting, and judging them without proof. You should not care about what people say if you want to live your life and do whatever you want. “Give people your deaf ear,” in other words, keep calm and walk with confidence.