Placing People in Boxes

So my co-workers are amazing and sometimes we hang out outside of work. Today, during and "Unofficial Mentor Hangout" we talked about placing people in boxes. One of these co-workers loves to talk about sexist and racist comments and how they aren't true. Seriously, this conversation comes up every time we are together. Today was fun though, so I wanted to reflect on some of it.


I love this picture, FYI. This is not what I
expected when I went to Google Images.

The idea of putting someone in a box is believing in a stereotype. For example, "Elementary Education Majors come to BYU just to get married- they aren't really that smart." While this is true for some people, it is not true for me. However, much of the time after saying my major people will place me in a box with the stereotype. They will think I am stupid and going into a dead end career- but this is a rant for another time.

Anyway, so we are constantly putting people in boxes. I know I am guilty of it too.When someone says that they are going into a music major, I do think "Oh...that is nice" (Really no offense to the music majors that are reading this). This is a box that I am trying to get over as well. We can work to change our stereotypes and our boxes. Eventually, it would be nice to remove them all.

Boxes don't have to be bad. One box we talked about tonight is a "Temple Worthy Mormon" box. This isn't a bad thing and, to me, this box says a lot of good about a person. This box is one that brings a person up in my mind. (I am NOT saying that if you aren't in this box you are brought down in my mind, I am just using it as an example).

So after having this whole conversation about boxes, I thought about what boxes I am in and what I want those boxes to mean. I was even thinking about listing some of them here for you, but then I realized that by changing what the boxes mean I really am saying that I want people to get over boxes.


We shouldn't fit people into boxes. Everyone is a different person and wonderful! Saying someone fits in the "Elementary Education Major Box" can mean so many different things!! Why have just one box for them? It is impossible to capture someone's essence into a couple of boxes. It just doesn't work. So how can we get over this box idea? Here are some of the ideas that I cam up with for myself:

1. Removing Stereotypes
2. Believing the Good in People
3. Wanting to be Unique

Okay, so first is removing stereotypes. This seems pretty easy, but I know that I sometimes struggle with it. We have talked in some of my minor classes about the idea of stereotypes. It is hard to remove something that we have been taught by our family, our friends, or even our culture. But when can see that people are individuals then we won't be constantly putting them in boxes.

Second is believing the good in people. I think that when we are able to see the positive in people then most of the time they can reach up to those. It is when we place people in the negative boxes that we are not allowing any room for them to grow in our minds. By seeing the good, we would not be surprised if they exceeded our expectations. We are allowing them to get out of the box :)

Third is wanting to be unique. When we stick ourselves into these pre-made boxes, then we are going to be seeing others in boxes as well. However, if we want to make sure that we are the outside of these boxes, we will allow others to be as well. Soon- we are not thinking about boxes, but individuals.

So this has been a different post than I have done in the past. Thanks for sticking with me if you are here. I just thought that it was an interesting idea and I wanted to record my thoughts.

So remove yourself from the boxes and
Come what may and love it.