Expectations

Expectations are some of the trickiest things in the whole planet. They skew your perceptions of the world in a certain way, and when they are not met, your whole world is rocked. However, without expectations, we are just lost, confused, and unengaged. We need to expect something in order to really be invested in life, but we have to learn to be flexible when those expectations are different than reality.

I was expecting spring break training to be fun. And at first, all I felt was pain. Lots of pain. But as I began to just expect misery, I realized that I was actually having fun. I remember when I was really little we were carving pumpkins at my grandparents house, and something didn't go exactly as my sister expected it so she stormed off crying. She missed the rest of the fun because she was so set in her one expectation she couldn't enjoy the reality.

With regards to college, I didn't know what to expect. I was expecting Purdue to be kind of boring and lame. But I had no idea beyond that what would happen at college. I was ready to be on my own, and that was really all I knew. Purdue trashed my expectations in the first week. I loved it. Campus was vibrant and there was so much to do! So many people! Then everything I tried surprised me. I joined a sorority, with absolutely NO idea what I was getting into, and actually enjoy it for the most part. I joined crew extremely skeptically thinking it would be way too intense for me, but I've actually come to love it despite all the hard days.

I've also changed a lot as a person, which I didn't expect. I thought I was pretty much going to be the same person I was when I left high school. Saying it out loud, it sounds silly. Of course I wouldn't stay the same. But perhaps what surprised me more than that I changed, is how I changed. I am still me, but I am learning to say more, be more firm in what I think, instead of just burying my own opinions in order to appease those around me.

Some of my changes are less positive. I lost my dedication to school work. I've fully embraced the "real world", learning from spending time out and about with people, instead of staring at my computer calculating integrals. I haven't found the discipline to balance my life and schoolwork. I hear that this particular problem gets easier once you are in classes you actually care about, which makes sense, so I'll buy it. Next semester will hopefully be a little better.

And some things I just didn't expect. I hadn't even considered them. It's amazing how many thing there are in life, how many tweaks to personality, little minute details in how you walk, talk, dress, act, think.  I can't even nail down exactly how or what things have changed, but every once in a while I learn something or someone notices something that I didn't even know existed, like a distinct gait, or things that everyone else just knows/assumes based on little evidence that I am completely unaware of.

One change that I am fighting is becoming more judgmental, making snap assessments of people based on what you first see or hear. I usually just take everything about a person into consideration when I think about them, and I don't fill in the gaps very often, I just wait until people fill them in for me with the truth.

I don't know if this is good or bad, or maybe it's just how I think. But the more I see people make quick decisive decisions about people and filling in the blanks to fit their expectation,s the more I find myself trying to dig in my heels and fight the expectation.