Graded.

I just saw my (un)official grades online. Let's just say that I'm happy with them. My grade in Experimental Design, the subject of derivations and stuff that I was highly anticipating, gave me the biggest smile this morning. Dr. David did count my painstakingly looooooooong hours of taking his 2nd exam as effort. :)

Enough about that because I have GC (grade conscious) glued on my forehead now.

What I truly wanted to write about is how other people judge us based on our looks or based on first impressions.

Perfect example:
Do I really look mahinhin?

A lot of other people say that I am. And Franco told me that it is a good thing. But my problem with being called mahinhin is not that I find it negative but the fact that I really do not see myself as such. Who do we believe then? People (a lot of them) who say that we are one thing or ourselves (just one but that one is YOU, yourself) who say that we are another?

At this point, I want to choose the latter. Aside from declaring to the world that I'm simply stubborn, I just want to declare that I know myself better. I would like to believe that I do. Because if I don't, then I would lose myself by giving in to how others see me. And if I do that, I'd end up with multiple personalities.

I used to be a very shy kid. To the extreme. In preschool, I had extreme stage fright to the point of not going up the stage to perform after hours and days of practice. Extreme silence to the point of peeing on my kindergarten teacher's lap instead of speaking up and saying that I had to use the c.r. Extreme obedience to the point of receiving an award, "Most Obedient", during Prep graduation in St. Vincent.

And in one of my Social Psychology books, I found that shyness has the following characteristics: non-confrontational, trying to please others, and wanting to be agreeable most of the time. Sh*t. I really am shy.

So in turn, "shy people" often say YES, nod, and smile. (GADDD. I have all the symptoms of shyness.) But then again, that can be said about "friendly people". So, are shy people also friendly people? Now, I'm confused.

Who watches HOUSE? The series about highly rare diseases that all end up in the Princeton Plainsborough training hospital, satisfying Dr. Gregory House's hunger for solving interesting (take note, they have to be interesting) puzzles. And interesting puzzles = a 10-year-old girl with a stroke or other factors that don't normally fit together. Try to watch atleast one episode.

House would often base his diagnosis on patient's history reports, knowing at the back of his head that they lie. And then it would be at the latter part of the show when he would find a trivial information that could complete his interesting puzzle. Then he would find the perfect solution to the CORRECT diagnosis. But before having the correct diagnosis, he would have had a bunch of wrong guesses about the disease, complicating the patient's well-being with wrong medications. And making the whole storyline more intereting for the viewers.

I've always thought that I belonged under the category of "shy people". But then, after reading all the stuff from my undergraduate Social Psych book, I said that I am not letting this book tell me who I am and who I am not. And so, more than being "shy", I proved to be stubborn. And I was happy with that because first, it made my shyness symptoms more interesting. And second, it made my "shyness" questionable. How would you then see me now? (I swear, if you say mahinhin, I'd hit you on your tummy with a fan).

After watching several episodes of House (I'm not yet done with the DVDs), I think that I could be diagnosed elsewhere. Or I'll discover a new Psychological disorder altogether and name it LaJara's extreme shyness and stubborness disorder with the symptom of being too mahinhin. Or maybe I should just accept the fact that I do not have a disorder at all and I'm not even all of these adjectives that we use to label people.

If I got you confused somewhere in my line of thought, then GOOD!

What I'm actually trying to point here is that judgment based on profiles or first impressions are nothing but half-baked grades. Often, that's how other people base their judgment of us. And in the end, when talking about yourself, trust your own judgment. More often than not, they're the ones that matter.

As the song goes, the greatest love of all is truly found inside of you... :)

I believe that I am a healthy and happy person. Truly complex but very simple. Tough but deeply sentimental. I'm still GC but I know when to let go. I often cry but I love life. I often smile, not because of any other reason, but because I'm happy. (Sometimes we also have to take things for how they present themselves. Knowing when to analyze and when not to overdo it is an art we have to learn in this lifetime.)

Know yourself. Love yourself. And the rest will follow :)