Typically, any expectations I have going into a situation cannot be further from the truth. When I started as an environmental studies student at Lewis & Clark, it took me a solid month to realize the extent of the differences between the program I was in and the AP environmental science class I had taken the year before, which at the time I had thought was adequately preparing me to firmly understand what the environment consisted of (something that, as a graduating senior, I still cannot answer concisely). When I went abroad to Chile, the majority of my expectations were proven wrong the second I stepped off of the plane: no, the almost fifteen years of Spanish classes I had taken were not enough to fluently or even kind-of converse with Chileans. No, having an understanding of how Portland’s public transportation system works is not at all useful for understanding that of Valparaíso. No, it wasn’t possible for me to tip-toe around culture shock like I had hoped. And despite having spent a total of more than two months camping in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota, I never know what challenges and joys a new trip up there will offer me, even if I’m crossing the same portage that I’ve crossed five times before.
I am a person with a lot of expectations. I have high expectations of myself, and I have many, many expectations of what will happen everywhere I go. While occasionally positive, I tend to expect the worst, and often am forced to ignore the outcomes I fear and expect in order to prepare myself for the more likely outcomes. This is a relatively conscious managing technique that I’ve acquired after years of worrying about unlikely outcomes, and while this usually works out fine, there are times when I wish that I hadn’t ignored my intuition (like when the “unlikely” questions that I didn’t study for show up on the test). If anything, I have learned that the cliché can be true: expect the unexpected. If the tale of Oedipus isn’t evidence for this, I don’t know what is. You cannot anticipate the future, even if you actively try to control it. There are a million ways that any situation can go, and the best way to move forward is by being flexible and ready to confront the unexpected head on. What I have learned is that regardless of how you expect a situation to turn out, it will always happen at least slightly differently.
I think a good example is to think about a seashell. Specifically, think of an Auger shell (picture at the top of this post). Chances are, if anyone reading this were told to close their eyes and were then handed an Auger, and were then asked to picture what they expected that Auger to look like, each person would have a different expectation of what the shell would look like. In reality, the shell in their hand may be similar to what they imagined, or it may be completely different– a different size, or different color, or even broken. But it’s still a shell, and can still be used in some way; whether it’s to make jewelry, simply admire, or even if it’s just to challenge your expectations and change how you think moving forward.