When you see me, you see is a girl of light complexion who is five feet tall and hundred and twenty five pounds.  I have wavy brown hair that frames my head and frizzes out at the top.  I am decent looking, but not beautiful.  I am wearing a dark sweater and leggings with short brown boots.  I have on large earrings that glitter in the light.  All of this is apparent given my external appearance.  It is what you see everyday without ever really thinking.  Appearance means a lot of things especially at Lawrenceville.  But what we tend to forget, is that inside means a lot more.  When we see someone, the first thing we take in is appearance and we make a lot of initial judgments because of this, yet we forget that inner person is a lot more defining.  For instance, yes I have brown hair and am short, but do you know that I have an eating disorder? Do you know that I have anxiety and depression? Do you know that I suffer from severe stress disorder? The answer to these questions is no, you don’t because what you see is my external appearance. You cannot ever know what is going on inside someone.  And for that very reason, I question our day-to-day interactions.  When you see someone in a hall and blatantly ignore his presence or make a cruel joke, you don’t realize how you are affecting the person inside.  We are all masters of the façade and rock a solid mask, but those masks make it easier for people to get away with things they really shouldn’t.  Our masks prohibit people from seeing when we are hurt, allowing people to get away with more harm than good.  Just because we can suppress our emotions from our external appearances, does not mean those emotions just disappear from our insides. We are all battling different battles, some much worse than others.  We must respect that and treat people with that notion in mind.  What you say or do to someone affects him even if you cannot see it.  The smallest of things can have the biggest of impacts.  With that in mind, let’s try and be nicer to one another, respecting the fact that appearances can be deceiving.