You never know what life might do to your expectations.
Last week, I found that I could keep some vinyl records in my new apartment. But they can’t do much by just sitting on the shelf, so I suddenly became interested in acquiring a piece of equipment to play them on. I expected that I would have to find one to buy. After a few days of looking around in stores and on Amazon, I casually asked a staff member at the church where I’m working if he knew where I might find a record player.
“Oh, we should have one in the closet,” he said.
Sure enough, it was sitting up on the shelf, and I was allowed to keep it in my apartment for the school year.
That’s just one example of things working out in a way one didn’t expect—but expectations can be overturned in different ways, too.
On Saturday morning, citizens in Toledo and its surrounding areas found themselves in a water emergency, as their water was deemed unsafe to use due to toxins. Fortunately, I was not directly affected because of my residency in Bowling Green, but my family and many others I know were affected. Nobody in Toledo woke up planning to be put into such an unusual and difficult situation.
I had already planned on driving up to Maumee to see my family on the day the water was announced unsafe, and I still did. While I was there, I couldn’t help but think about how a situation like that made me aware of the things we take for granted—the things we expect in life.
We expect to have clean water at our disposal. We expect to have light when we flip a switch.
I expected for a record not to skip, and became wrapped up in trying to figure out why it was doing so when it did. Then I remembered that thousands of people not very far from where I was sitting were concerned about the fact that they couldn’t drink the water from their faucets, and I realized I needed to realign my own concerns.
How often do things turn out contrary to our expectations? I’m guessing that for most of you, it happens a lot. How do we react when things don’t go how we think they would—or should? We can stew over it, or we can take things in stride, even if they’re difficult, and understand that things will ultimately turn out all right.
The last three months have involved a lot of working with overturned expectations, especially with the roll-with-the-punches endeavor of putting together a newspaper each week.
This week wraps up my position as the summer editor-in-chief of the BG News. The experience has been different than some of my expectations for it, but I am still grateful to have been able to serve in the position. I want to take this opportunity to thank this summer’s staff for the work they put into each edition of the paper over the last twelve weeks. It’s been a pleasure working with you. I also wish the best of luck to Cameron, who will be the editor-in-chief for the 2014-2015 academic year.
The next edition of the BG News will appear with the beginning of the fall semester. Expectations for the new academic year will abound. I, too, have expectations for the coming school year. But the fun will be in seeing how things may go differently than I thought they would.
As someone who has been through three rounds of beginning a new college year, I offer what I’ve learned from those three times. Things usually don’t go how you expect, but they still turn out for the better. Sometimes, they turn out even better than you could have ever imagined. And they will if we know how to appropriately react to what life does to our expectations.
Maybe this summer exceeded your expectations. Perhaps it’s been rougher than expected. In either regard, remember that—like an old record player—the world keeps spinning around toward limitless possibilities.
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