Mia Lasic-Ellis

Over Thanksgiving break, somewhere between turkey trotting and sitting in front of the TV (go Buckeyes), I kept trying to figure out what I wanted to write this week. I had some good ideas, random ones, questionable ones, but nothing that gave me that “yes” feeling.

So I did what I always do when I’m spiraling: I turned to the women in my life who speak volumes without realizing it—my mom, my sisters, my cousins and my aunt. And what better place to summon deeply feminine energy than an underground sushi bar with a few chilled bottles of Pinot Grigio? The miso soups hadn’t even hit the table, and we were already fully unhinged, speaking our minds.

We were bouncing between topics—debating which sashimi dish to order and discussing how complicated adulting is—when my older sister said something that stuck: that our perception of someone is often based on the moment we meet them. Whether it’s meeting someone in college or running into them at a bar, we turn them into categories: “my college friend” or “the guy at the bar. ” After my sister mentioned this, I couldn’t help but wonder—are we all just versions of ourselves frozen in the moment someone first met us?

Take my older sister, for example. People think she is a city girl because she goes to school in Boston and thrives on all things urban. But they don’t know she grew up on a rural Maine farm, raking and raising Katahdin lambs. At one point, she said, “They’re not wrong—I love the city, but I’ve also pulled a baby lamb out of a ewe’s birth canal!” and we all burst out laughing. But the truth behind it lingered. How much of a person do we ever really see? Especially if we don’t put in the effort to ask.

When I spent my first year of college in Southern California, I felt this too. Everyone seemed to be from Los Angeles, the Bay or San Diego, and I could count the Maine kids on one hand. People assumed I was from out West too, probably because fewer than ten percent of students were from out of state. Is that something we all do? Slot people into a category before knowing a single true thing about them? I’ve realized I’ve internalized that habit a little myself.

So that’s why, when I meet someone new now, I sort of background check them: Do you have siblings? What’re your friends back home like? Did you play sports? I can hear myself sounding like a detective, but I genuinely believe those details matter. They’re the breadcrumbs of who someone becomes.

Making friends as adults is also much more challenging than when we were kids. Everyone has their routines, their identities, their stories already underway. So, how do you build something new without knowing the foundation? Is it possible that part of adulthood is accepting that connection requires effort and also curiosity?

But the thing about assumptions is that we cling to them because they make the world feel simpler. If we can guess who someone is by their friend group or the brand of their coat or their vibe, maybe we feel safer. But what if we’re wrong? What if the truth of a person lives in the parts we overlook? The parts we don’t feel like matter?

So I’ll leave you with this: What would happen if, the next time we met someone, we walked in with no assumptions at all?

No preloaded judgments from friends, no analyzing outfits, no decoding accents. Just openness.

Maybe then we’d hear stories that are too often left untold. Maybe we’d discover new corners of people we thought we already understood.

Lily Mott is a member of the Class of 2028.