Expectations

Expectations are something that everyone has. You perform an action, and before any results are actually observed, you automatically come up with what you think the results will be. Sometimes these expectations can be very accurate, but sometimes they can also be way off. I experienced the latter this past Thursday when we peer graded each others in-class essays. I personally had thought that the essay I wrote was one of my better essays, and was pretty interested to see what my peers would think of it. However, at the end of class when I looked at it again, my classmates had given me a grade much lower than I had expected. My first reaction was shock - had I really performed that badly? But as I continued on the read the comments they left, I realized that I had made one fatal mistake: I forgot to cite one of my sources. This resulted in me only having two quoted sources in my essay, rather than the required three, and bumped my score down quite a bit.

This unfortunate mishap made me think about expectations as a whole. Is it better to have high expectations or low expectations? If someone has very high expectations, they would experience tons of satisfaction if it can actually be fulfilled. Conversely, though, if these high expectations can't be reached, they might feel very disappointed in themselves. On the other hand, if someone always has very low expectations, it would be much easier to attain, but it wouldn't provide the same levels of happiness and satisfaction as the goal they reach wouldn't be that hard anyways. I guess my best answer to this question is that everyone has their own unique point between the two, and that different levels of expectations may be best for different situations.