I’m sure everyone who’s gone through school has heard the whole “don’t bully” or “stop bullying” speech.  We’ve heard the classic “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”  And we’ve certainly been taught the Golden Rule: treat others as you would like to be treated.  Yet some people still haven’t seemed to grasp the concept and tend to treat people in a very negative way. 

Growing up can be difficult, especially when you’re going through high school and still trying to find out who you are and want to become.  It doesn’t help when you’re constantly picked on and struggle to fit in with your peers.  People are often judged and made fun of when others view them as “different” or “weird.”  Some are frequently harassed–whether verbally or physically– and even begin to look down on themselves.  They hear from others everyday that they’re ugly or weird, and soon start to view themselves that way. 

Imagine what it’s like to be bullied on a day-to-day basis. You walk into school every morning anxious to leave, though the morning has just begun.  As soon as you walk through the doors, you’re greeted with nasty looks from surrounding students and a few begin shouting demeaning names at you. “Fatty!” they call.  “She’s so gross,” you hear them say.  You feel your face becoming hot and the burning sting of tears developing in your eyes.  You won’t look them in the face, hoping they won’t see your pain, not wanting to give them the satisfaction in knowing they’ve won.  You want to yell back at them, tell them to stop hurting you, to finally give you a break; but, instead you continue down the hall, head bowed, feeling smaller than an ant.  Every day after school you go home and cry. You look in the mirror and don’t like what you see.  You begin to hate yourself and wish you could be somebody else; wish you could do something to stop the pain and the relentless harassment.  But instead you choose to keep it all inside, to suffer in silence.

There really are people in the world who suffer from bullying in situations like this, and it is guaranteed that there have been students CHS who have been teased and picked on.  I am one hundred percent sure that many students at this school have bullied another at one point in their life.  In high school—and even life in general—we have this mindset that someone who is different from us or what we view as the norm is weird and is not to be accepted.  We judge people off of everything: their clothes, their looks, their attitude, how much money they do or do not have, their personality, etc.  Psychologists have even proved in a recent study that the average human judges a person upon meeting them and has a set opinion of that person within just seven seconds.  Seven seconds certainly isn’t enough time to get to know someone, and you definitely shouldn’t have your mind made up about them within that short amount of time.  We are supposed to get to know someone before we go off judging them; too often we forget that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.  We also forget how hurtful our judgments and harsh words can be.

Do you want to be the person that makes someone cry?  The reason for a person’s low self esteem?  Judging a person does not define who they are, but rather it defines who you are.  So who are you?