By ElissaEisele

Throughout high school, it can be easy to find yourself misjudging people off one interaction you’ve had with them. This is true for all grade levels but misjudgment can occur at a higher rate during your freshman year. 

As a freshman, it is no walk in the park learning the names of hundreds of new classmates and their personalities. Situations are bound to arise where new Marian students feel like they’ve been misjudged, or they’ve misjudged others. Sophomore Jasmine Carranza and three freshmen, Mary Beatty, Keely Robbins and Alena Kehm, shared stories of times they felt like they were misjudged or they had wrongly misjudged someone in their lives. 

Jasmine Carranza shared her experience of being misjudged by people on a day-to-day basis saying how because she is mixed race “people assume I don’t fit into any category.” She went on to explain her experience being misjudged saying that the misjudgment spans beyond her race and is evident in the activities that she participates in. 

Carranza believes that many people have a hard time understanding her because she does not fit into a specific category in many aspects of her life, so instead they wrongly attempt to pinpoint her personality. Mary Beatty shared her own experience of misinterpreting the character of someone close to her saying she “misjudged someone but not in a negative sense.” Going on, she explained how she originally had a negative perception of someone but after getting to know the person she saw them “in a more positive light.” 

Keely Robbins, a transfer student, had a similar experience, admitting that she can quickly make assumptions based on “how someone looks” without getting to know the person. 

Alena Kehm also had an instance where she felt like she miscalculated someone’s character. Kehm has experienced firsthand how making assumptions about someone’s character can be shocking when their true self is revealed. When running into an old grade school friend, Kehm was surprised to realize “how much of a changed person she was after she went to high school.” 

Beatty, Robbins and Kehm have all experienced instances where they felt like they had misjudged someone but are learning from their mistakes. Learning from their mistakes has inspired them to “look at people in different ways before coming to a conclusion about who they really are,” Kehm said. Their testaments serve as a reminder to all that there is more to people than what first meets the eye.