1. You're hosting a welcome party at your house for your new youth pastor. You:
   1. Don't even think about cleaning. Who's going to notice you didn't vacuum?
      
      
   2. Pick up the best you can. You don't want to be embarrassed by dust bunnies.
      
      
   3. Turn into Cinderella. You spend every free moment cleaning the house. Nothing short of spotless will do.
      
      
2. At midnight, your printer spits out the last page of your very first A.P. biology paper. You suddenly realize you forgot to hit spell-check. You:
   1. Hit the sack. You figure it's not an English paper, so spelling shouldn't count for much.
      
      
   2. Decide to get up early the next morning to spell-check it and print it again. You really want a good grade on your first paper.
      
      
   3. Brew another pot of coffee. If you forgot to spell-check it, what else did you forget? You'll stay up all night just to make sure it's absolutely perfect.
      
      
3. When your teachers lay out the rules on the first day of school, you:
   1. Lean your head on your desk. After all, you're tired and teachers always say the same old thing and always give the same old rules.
      
      
   2. Make eye contact with your new teachers and demonstrate you're listening when they talk about classroom rules.
      
      
   3. Ask your new teachers plenty of thoughtful questions and write down almost everything they say.
      
      
4. You have a job interview right after soccer practice. You:
   1. Don't have time to change, so you go in your dirty sweats.
      
      
   2. Ask your coach if you can leave 5 minutes early so you can shower and change into some clean clothes.
      
      
   3. Skip practice that day; you want to make sure you have plenty of time to get ready.
      
      
5. You meet your date's parents for the first time. You:
   1. Nod a quick hello and then look at your date and say, "Well, gotta go."
      
      
   2. Smile and extend your hand. After a quick hand shake and greeting, you say how nice it was to meet them and take off for a nice evening.
      
      
   3. Since it was the first time you were meeting your date's parents, you dress better than usual and make sure you engage them in "intelligent conversation."
      
      
6. On the way to pick up your youth group's guest speaker from the airport, you realize the greasy smell wafting from under the passenger seat is your best friend's leftover fries. You:
   1. Shove them further under the seat. You'll just pretend like you don't smell a thing.
      
      
   2. Stop at the nearest dumpster to trash them. Then you apologize to the speaker for the smell.
      
      
   3. Decide you'd rather be a few minutes late than be embarrassed by your car. You carefully clean out all the fries, then drop by the closest convenience store and spend five bucks on a can of deodorizer. You spray the car until it's completely odorless.
      
      
7. You volunteered to be a greeter at church on Sunday mornings. But late Saturday night you realize that you don't have any clean clothes. You:
   1. Fish a pair of wrinkled khakis out of the dirty clothes bin. You hang them up and hope they don't smell like dirty socks in the morning.
      
      
   2. Search waaayy back inside your closet and dig out a pair of pants that haven't seen the light of day for a while. Luckily they still fit, but best of all, they're clean.
      
      
   3. Decide to stay up late and do your laundry.
      
      
8. When you meet someone for the first time you:
   1. Don't really care what they think. What they see is what they get.
      
      
   2. Try to show your best side.
      
      
   3. Obsess over what they think about you.
      
      
9. You spend two hours graphing the effects of photosynthesis on plants for a science class project. Before you can put them in your backpack, your baby brother turns them all into one big wrinkle. You:
   1. Shove them into your backpack. Neatness probably won't count for that many points, anyway.
      
      
   2. Carefully smooth the pages, then place a couple of your heaviest textbooks on top of the graphs to flatten them out.
      
      
   3. Scrap the graphs and make new ones.
      
      
10. You've spent all morning lounging in your gym sweats. Now your mom needs you to run to the store. You:
    1. Slip into some shoes and go.
       
       
    2. Quickly change into jeans and throw on a hat. You don't want anyone to see your bed head.
       
       
    3. Take a shower, then spend 0 minutes styling your hair. Who knows who you'll meet at the store?
       
       
11. You volunteered to bring a dessert to the reception that takes place after the band concert. You pick up some frosted cupcakes at the grocery store. On your way to school, you make a sudden stop, and the box of cupcakes slides off the seat, ruining the frosting on a few of them. You:
    1. Take them as they are. After all, you didn't say you'd bring perfect cupcakes, just cupcakes.
       
       
    2. Take the smashed cupcakes out of the box when you get to school. The other ones still look fine, and, hey, you and some friends can have a little snack.
       
       
    3. Turn around and go back to the store to get a new box. There's no way you'll bring ruined cupcakes to the reception!
       
       

"No worries!" That's your motto for first impressions. That's cool—it sounds like you are comfortable enough to be who you are wherever you go. But as you apply to colleges, remember: First impressions really do matter. So if you make tons of mistakes on your application, take time to fix them before you drop it in the mailbox. And when you go for your college interviews, don't forget to dress nicely. You don't have to go overboard, just put your best foot forward.

Right on! You understand how important first impressions are, but you don't stress out about them. You care what others think, but you don't obsess about trying to impress anyone. If you keep this same mindset when you apply to colleges, you'll knock the socks off all those admissions counselors.

You're a perfectionist! When it comes to maintaining your spotless image, your work is never done. You won't rest until everything is just right. It's great to make an unforgettable first impression, but don't stress out over it. As you're searching for that perfect college fit, try to remember there's more to you than your image. Don't be so hard on yourself, and remember to let your true self shine through.

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Campus Life magazine.
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