It blows my mind when people who dislike most other humans have kids. How do you think you’ll possibly get along with these quasi-random personalities now permanently entrenched in your family?

In the spirit of deepening your love for humanity at large, find its outliers and learn to love them first. It only makes loving the rest of the spectrum easier.

3. Learning how not to judge a book by its cover takes the kind of practice that caring for difficult friends offers.

Never have I spoken to someone for more than 2 hours without getting some kind of surprise. Lives are complicated. Perhaps the clean-cut girl in your philosophy section has a cult following in the death metal scene that would leave you floored. Even if her life is just as you would have predicted, there’s an emotional richness to her story that you’re missing out on right now. People are beautiful and messy and sublime. Befriending those who don’t stand out to you can serve as a humbling reminder of human complexity.

Now that I’m here in my adult body with my adult mind and several of my adult life choices already made, I’m surprised to find out just how much of a typecast character I am at Harvard. Whether I’m (erroneously) assumed to be the quiet white girl from the suburbs or the snotty little know-it-all, the eyes defining me fall blind to the intricate pleasures I do have to offer.

The “unappealing personality crowd” for much of my life has been a “them” rather than an “us.” Yet as I age, I find more division and more judgments available for use. At this point, I think we all have personalities distinct enough to prove unappealing.

Please remember that the next time you’re on the brink of reaching out a hand to meet someone new, or when you’re just about to unfriend that difficult somebody on Facebook, they are me, they are you, and we all are sublime creations stuffed into types just waiting to be let out.

Veronica S. Wickline ’16, an ancient history concentrator, lives in Kirkland House.