Journal #4 Categorize/Identify People

Whenever you first meet someone, you always have a first thought or impression on him or her. This can be either or good thing, or most of the time it is a bad thing. Your first impression of someone is given by his or her appearance. This usually includes clothing and how someone looks. The name labels that people use are usually jock, nerd, prep, goth, clown, or loner. These labels are not good because, you are just categorizing someone by the way they look not because of how they are on the inside. Though your label may to right, you do not really know if it is true until you fully get to know someone. I also think that labels are not good because, just because someone is a jock and plays sports it does not mean they do not care about their grades and get bad grades. A person may be a jock but get good grades so does that mean they are a nerd too? That is the big danger of categorizing someone. The labels do not include everyone and are usually not true so they are stereotypes. You will never forget the first impression of someone and this is usually not good. The chance of your first impression being completely right is not very good at all. You could label someone as a nerd and then come to find out he is a really cool kid, and you are so glad that you got to know him and find out about him. Categorizing can also be a good thing though. If you label someone as a druggie because, you know they do drugs, then that impression will help you stay away from the wrong crowd. If you know who does bad things and you do not believe in doing those things, then categorizing a group can be good because, it keeps you from falling into the wrong crowd. Categorizing is a very dangerous thing to do but, it does have its positives.