Expectation Management

It’s exam week again. It’s back. I’m writing this and stalling the three hour take home final I should be doing on Blackboard, and reintroducing myself to Pandora because only one person can use the Spotify account attached to the Roku at a time.

Anyway, I read this article recently about the problem with millennials. We have high expectations for our lives, expectations so high that we can’t fulfill them, which ultimately leads to our unhappiness. The problem starts all the way back with our grandparents, children of the Great Depression and World War II. They grew up with nothing, and their expectations were low. When they became adults their idea of happiness was simple, food on the table, a happy family, and stable job. In turn, their kids grew up with expectations of the lives their parents had, the American Dream, but by then the world was a little better, and their lives exceeded their smaller expectations. Then those kids, the Baby Boomers, gave birth to us, the millennials. Their lives had exceeded their original expectations, so they instilled in their children the idea that they can be anything they want. That they should be happy, because their expectations were fulfilled, why would their kids be? Well, that’s is our downfall. Our expectations are so high, we can’t live up to them.

One of the biggest ideas of my adolescence when trying to choose a career was passion. Apparently passion is a new idea that came along in the last 20 years. Our parents and our grandparents weren’t worried about passion, what they wanted was stability. But we were fed the idea that we should be fulfilled. Then there is the second millennial idea. The idea that were special. I was not really fed a lot of that as a kid. I was told I was important and special to my family, but not to the world. The world owes nothing to me. But I’ve seen it, people thinking their special, the world owes them everything, their friends and family owe them everything. We’re owed nothing, but if we have the expectation we are, that’s where unhappiness comes.

Be careful what you wish for, because it probably won't come true and life is mostly about expectation management.

— Night Vale podcast (@NightValeRadio) September 9, 2015

Life is about expectation management. Keep your grade expectations low, and they can only improve.

Noelle