July 29, 2010

• first impressions

  They say that nothing is more important than first impressions. 

  I'm terrible at pretty much everything about first impressions. (1) I don't give a good first impression (except, for some reason, in job interviews, which I think I'm able to do better than almost anything else, including my actual job), and (2) I am bad at forming accurate first impressions of other people.

  The first is due to a combination of being somewhat shy (although you wouldn't necessarily think it, because I overcompensate in other ways), and easily bored, so not only am I bad at small talk, I also can't really pay attention to it. I often end up giving people the impression that I'm either snobby or have Asperger's. This is not the case if I feel like I'm in control of the social situation (usually meaning that it's a very small group, or I know the majority of the people there, or I organized the event), and it's something I'm slowly improving over the years.

  The second... I can't really say why the second is true. It's probably partly due to the same reasons that I give bad first impressions. I can't pay attention to an unfamiliar person for very long, because I'm so easily distracted or bored, so I don't absorb much information about them. And even with the information that I do glean and retain, I often misread the cues. I think that people who have the gift of reading others quickly are by nature deeply empathetic, and I just don't have that kind of empathy for people I don't know yet. Add in the fact that I have a terrible memory for faces (and have been known to meet the same person five times without realizing it was the same person), and I might not even be getting any first impressions of people, at all.

  It makes me wonder what missed friendships I might have had that have died before being formed, just because I do so badly in first meetings. 

  The good news, and I'm so glad there is good news, is that once I do overcome these initial barriers, I think I give my friends a better second (or tenth, however long it ends up taking) impression, and I form better impressions of them, as well, which is a good thing, or I wouldn't have any friends. But it's still somewhat disturbing to think that with almost all of my closest friends, I can recall almost no first impressions, or first impressions that are fundamentally, irreconcilably different than the impressions I have of them now that I know them well, and I think it's pretty likely that their first impressions of me (if any) were not spectacular. It's just by pure luck that we managed to push through to become and stay friends (although I tend to think that my resulting friendships are somehow stronger, due to having survived the poor initial conditions).

  • 1:19 am
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