and everything, even if it’s not as glamorous or high up as you would have imagined yourself being post-college.” The reality is companies don’t only hire people based on merits. Employers also look at your personal qualities and your personality fits into their working culture. Even hobbies matter — chemist Jonathan Yip works in a marine biology lab and observed that all his colleagues have diving certifications. Many experience rejection after a great interview yet score the position after a horrible one. It’s hard to predict or control success. Finally, here’s what I call the real reality — expectations that become true do not always make you the happiest.
Nat Ware concluded that people are terrible at predicting what makes them happy. Just like how we can overestimate ourselves, we are prone to faulty judgments of thinking only by getting what we want will make us satisfied — the job, the salary, the person we want to meet. This faulty judgment applies not just to our careers but to all areas of our lives. It could be the person of our dreams we want to date, but we end up realizing they are not as wonderful as we fantasized. It could be that movie we were dying to watch, but discovered the experience was not as incredible as we thought it would be.
You could do all the right things, and the right opportunity might not come up for you.
In his TED Talk, “Why we’re unhappy — the expectation gap,” founder and CEO of 180 Degrees Consulting and Rhodes scholar
To close this expectation gap, we must be open to seeing each undesirable incident as an opportunity — not only for growth but also training lessons that prepare us for a set of destinations that suits us better in our journey. Many SCAD students took a detour before coming to art school, studying engineering or politics before realizing their potential is better suited toward the creative field. Those initial experiences that we had do not go to waste — they are additional facets we bring to the table. I studied art history at my first university for before transferring to SCAD. Though I am a writing student, my background in art history helped me score my first internship at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. My writing skills aided my work in their social media and communications department. Expectations are not bad — they are expressions of our desires and aspirations. Whether realistic or not, we should always respect our dreams because they represent a part of our personality and character. We need to be open-minded and flexible when our reality checks come in and adapt to circumstances when they require us to. What’s most important is that we understand a fulfilling life means overcoming rejections and struggles. Happiness is not a destination — it’s a byproduct of our journey. Lowering expectations is not the only way to happiness. Having an open mind and welcoming new possibilities will bring us the fulfillment and meaning we crave in our lives.