Over the weekend, I cut my hair and dyed it from faded auburn to dark brown, bordering on black. I was nervous about how my students would react. Adults are generally careful about expressing opinions that could potentially send one into a vortex of despair and self-loathing, but not so middle schoolers. This is when a thick skin, unlike mine, which is so thin that my underlying desperate need for approval shows through, would come in handy. That is why I felt appropriately apprehensive walking my new hair into school yesterday morning.

Here are a smattering of the comments I received:

“Mrs. Hurwitz, have you gone Goth?”

“Wow. You look just like Snow White.”

“I liked it way better before.”

“Did you make it like that on purpose?”

The funny thing was that as the day and the comments went on, I learned to stop steeling myself and start accepting candid assessments with cheerful neutrality. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, right? I also figured out that the opinion that I really messed up and now I look like a Disney character makes less of an impact when it’s coming from a person wearing mustard cargo pants with an elastic waistband.