I am a Chinese-American junior in high school with a reserved disposition; within seven seconds, this is what can be deduced. In the first two, you can assume from my American accent that I was born in the United States. After audible elements, comes visual: no glasses can either indicate 20/20 vision or nearsightedness, likely the latter. In the sixth second, the Quasimodo posture underneath a cardigan might denote that I am an underclassman. And in the last second, you believe you are correct.

This is the phenomenon of a first impression, a faltering foundation of implicit bias and assumptions. As a natural consequence, every person we interact with has a varying connotation of who we are — I am both the person who held up the door and the one who forgot to. In one moment, we solidify a definition of ourselves.

The influence is grander than a limp impression. It sheaths on our own identities and impacts how we’re willing to portray ourselves. My voice follows the cadence of an American timbre, but the passport I hand to customs officers corrects the intonation; Montréal, Canada was my hometown until it drove 1000 kilometers to Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Since middle school, people have instinctively classified me as a high schooler. When I graduated out of eighth grade this past year, I assumed I’d hear more plausible conjectures of my grade. However, the ballpark estimates were out of bounds when the “junior” and “senior” labels conflicted with my actual label of “freshman.”

There’s a science behind it: eight encounters are required to reverse the curse of a first impression. From this, it compels purposeful effort to truly learn the authentic color of a person, where different lights cast a different hue to our eyes. By seeking the underpinnings of people, listening to the rhythms that each value pulses, we can find that we are grasping more about ourselves.

It begins with subtracting the first impressions because it adds to what we already know. And eventually, the Chinese-Canadian freshman that at times, I have forgotten myself to be, can find the merit in pursuing even the most abstract of truths.