Never Judge A Book By Its Cover

Everybody must have heard of the saying 'never judge a book by its cover' at least a gazillion times before. And even though it was relentlessly ingrained into our minds not to judge a person by the first impression, we still tend to do so because it's just part of our nature. We tend to avoid people who gave us a bad first impression. As for those who gave us a rather good first impression, we would like to get to know them better. I read about a research done on first impressions (can't remember where I read it before) and the researchers found out that we tend to have good impressions on people who are good looking, neat, dress well and anything positive that we can find about that person. However, if we feel that a person gave us negative first impressions, we would do our best to avoid that person, shunning him/her even before we got to know that person well.

Nobody could escape saying that they've never judged a book by its cover before. I don't deny the fact that I sometimes do tend to trust my first impression on a person rather than getting to know that person well enough to pass judgement on him/her. I've always avoided getting to know guys from my hostel because my first impression towards them were not positive. I was stereotyping them, being judgemental and trusting my first impression rather than giving myself a chance to get to know them better. I tend to shun them, prefering my own company most of the time. But mixing around with Jo made me see a better picture of those guys in my hostel.

I was rather apprehensive hanging out with the guys in the first place because of the feelings of prejudice and stereotype in me, which I'm not proud to announce. But after hanging out with them for a few weeks now, I find my apprehension towards them, my prejudice towards them, my stereotyping towards them, slowly dissolving into the thin air because the guys are actually really nice people. Even though their skin is darker than mine or their dressing is typically 'Ah Beng', they are actually really, really smart guys who are doing courses that even I wouldn't dare dream of doing. They are also very caring people, always asking me how am I when they found out that I was sick for a whole week. And frankly, hanging out with them do make me laugh more often these days. I find myself not wallowing in self-pity so much these days and I found myself slowly accepting the reality that Granny's not here anymore even though it feels surreal at times.

But most importantly, by following the saying 'never judge a book by its cover', I found myself much happier these days amid the stressful situation that I face everyday in the college. =)