What Makes You Angry?

Mandy Mu

Professor Michael Schrimper

Intro to college writing101-28

10 September 2015

What makes you angry?

        Have you ever had a hard time trying to explain something about yourself that people assume wrongly? Have you ever felt hurt when people are making fun of you without showing any respect? Have you ever doubted your self by others’ sight? Negatively being judged makes me feel angry. When people judge others by appearance or behavior blindly, they get hurt. We should all stop judging and be open minded.

        Appearance does not always tell the truth. People judge easily by appearance. There are certain stereotypes in those who judge often that wealthy people wear fancy clothes and wear luxury jewelry. However it is not necessarily true. Taking Steve Jobs as an example, if he was not famous enough that everybody can easily recognize him, probably not many people could tell that he is one of the greatest men of this century. Wearing a white simple T-shirt and his all time favorite jeans, Steve looks fairly ordinary among the people. But what his appearance doesn’t tell is his brilliant ideas and the nice design for Apple. That is to say judging people by their appearance may not help one get the right information or the whole stories behind them. In addition, seeing only people’s outlook and trying to make conclusion about someone is shallow and biased. There is always things more important than appearance like skills, intelligence, personality, etc.

        Judging without getting the whole story or being open minded is arbitrary. Everyone is somehow raised in a different environment.We have different backgrounds, religions, or experiences. In my own life,  I had a bad experience about being judged by my peers. When I was in third grade, I transferred from the school in my home town where is the most west city in China to one that in Shanghai that on the other side of the country. It happened in an English class. The teacher asked me to spell the word “donkey”. I spelled it the way I usually did. “d.o.n. k.e.y”. Then people were laughing at me which made me feel angry and embarrassed. They insisted that I said “ d.o.m.k.e.y” and started making fun of me saying I was too dumb to spell such an easy word. But I was really sure about what I said. Seeing them talking about my accent, I feel hurt inside. They judged me without knowing the culture background of where I came from. They judged me because they had never heard anyone talking with the accent from someplace they had never been to. People can’t make conclusions except he or she who really knows the situation or they might be wrong. Taking an old Chinese story as another example. There was a blind person who was trying to figure out what does an elephant looks like. He touched the ears of the elephant and certainly made the point that the elephant looks like two fans. Then he touched the nose and claimed that the elephant looks like a soft long tube. This simple but profound story addresses the fact that when people are judging, they are like the blind person who didn’t get the entire picture and made the conclusion irresponsibly.