Expectations and the Unexpected

On the statistics part of the Holy Blog Control Room, there's a map showing where the density of my views come from. Of course the good old US of A was a healthy shade of green, beautifully showcasing where most of my views come from. However, something caught my attention. While nearly other country stood a stark shade of white, one had a faint tinge of green. Yep. I have myself one viewer in Russia. Kudos to you, Russian reader guy.

On a different note, let us (and by "us" I mean "I") talk about expectations. Expectations are a great thing to have, except maybe when it makes you spend all the money you own and makes you paranoid of neighbors who never change out of their wedding dress. However, some expectations can quickly be turned into disappointment. Take, for example, the AP scores the mailman oh-so-generously left me after I wrote an essay describing how his job is useless. 4, 4, 4, 5. Not bad. Scores that some kids would be ecstatic about. My reaction was nowhere near that. I sat there, for a moment, wondering how I had dipped so low as to only receive one five. Why was I so disappointed, I asked myself, when these were scores to be proud of?

The answer, of course, was because I was sitting in a room filled with highly intelligent people at the time. Had I been sitting, for example, in my APUSH class, I would have felt like a beamy ray of sunshine-filled happiness. The fact that everyone else in the room was on par with me intellectually greatly changed my excitement level toward the results.

Now, readers, I'm well aware that most of you have drawn the obvious moral of the story: surround yourself with stupid people to help your self esteem. Wrong. The moral of this story is the exact opposite. Seek out good company, those who don't annoy you, who can match every bit of your wit and intellect, who can ask you a question you can't answer, whose lexicon is just as diverse as yours, and whose opinions exist. Put yourself in the midst of worthy opponents, who can make you aware of the fact that you are not the very best. Only then do we get the taste of a greater expectation.