Sunday, January 10, 2010

Expectations

AP Language worthy? What exactly does that mean? Who decides what’s AP worthy and what’s not? If the answer to my question is vague enough to be “whatever you think AP worthy means,” then I guess I have to look at what AP stands for. Advanced Placement. So any topic that’s considered to be advanced is AP worthy, right? Then my concern is that what’s advanced to me may not be advanced to another. With such a dilemma and the need to write five hundred words I find myself in the middle of quite a conundrum.

As I was thinking about what advanced was to me I realized that I had created this problem all on my own. I had expected that advanced had a deeper meaning then it really does. I placed an emphasis on a thing that can’t really have any emphasis placed on it. So why is it that I created expectations that only made my life more difficult? Then it hit me, people create expectations all the time. Wether they’re the expectations you hold for another person, yourself, or things and places in general expectations are everywhere and they either hurt a person or drive them insane.

Teachers are my favorite example of people that have expectations and get hurt by them. For my example I’ll use a teacher that is completely narcissistic and thinks their above seeing their students are actual people; lets also say that this teacher has an intense need to analysis things and make this teacher almost every students favorite. This teacher more than likely has expectations for their students; expectations that will make them rather upset when they’re not met. This teacher, being narcissistic, will not see that that any failure to meet expectations is in no way the students fault, they will of course see it as a failure from the student. This failure will then irritate the teacher causing them to look down on the student and almost refuse to have anything to do with them. This unjust occurs because of the power of expectations. If the teacher was a person who practiced tolerance of all people for who they are rather than the practice of viewing people for who they should be than maybe said teacher would have less stress and be an all around happier person and isn’t that what this entire existence is about, being happy? Clearly, the expectations this teacher had only caused unnecessary negative emotion for the people involved. If only that was the worse thing that expectations did.

Expectation only get worse the more personal they get, the worst in my opinion being the physiognomic expectations one holds for them self. These expectations can sometimes help a person achieve more self confidence especially if said expectation coincide with certain goals a person has. However certain physiognomic expectations can cause sever mental and physical damage. Lets take Louise and say that she’s 11; she’s just started reading Seventeen magazine and comparing her body to other female bodies. She also allows herself to become influenced by what she sees in the magazines and T.V. At the age of twelve Louise begins to expect from herself that she must look just like Kate Moss or Mary-Kate Olsen to be beautiful. As a result Louise then begins to look in every shiny window or mirror that crosses her path quickly criticizing every limb and feature she has. Louise can only see the ugly no matter how beautiful she is. She expects herself to change; to be beautiful. Louise than then reads an article about bulimia; rather than doing it’s job of scaring her away from it, it intrigues her. Louise places the idea in the back of her mind and continues with her life. As Louise grows she finds that she is no closer to the expectation of beauty she’s held for herself for many years. She decides then to take action, to do something. She finds herself alone at home on a Friday night while everyone is gone. She feels that she has over indulged do to her absent minded gorge fest in front of the T.V. She suddenly became nauseous and decides to give into her need. A feeling of pain and dirtiness is felt after she’s done this but as she looks at herself in the mirror she decides to keep doing it. Once she’s finished she feels light and relaxed, like everything is better. As this process continues people notice a change in Louise, a once very pretty girl has diminished before their eyes, the light that once sparkled within Louise has gone out and will more than likely never return.

Expectations only hurt people. Even people who expect the best from themselves will drive themselves insane fulfilling their expectation. My question in all of this is why? If someone like me can see what expectations do, then why are they still held today? Why is it that people hold these expectations if somewhere inside themselves they know that it will only drive them mad when imminent failure is reached? Why is it that expectations will probably never go away?

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