I’m grown up with this certain mentality that we’re always supposed to have these strict expectations for ourselves and for others. I, for one, have always had high expectations for myself both in school and throughout my life in general. Because of that, I naturally expect a lot from not only myself, but everyone else in my life as well. Oftentimes, our expectations of ourselves and others don’t always prove to be so reliable in the end. We expect our friends and family to always be there and back us up in every situation and we expect people to be good and kind because, by nature, that’s how we want and expect people to act. Sadly, our expectations of people’s actions are almost always let down by the reality of one’s actions.

While I do have great expectations for myself and for the actions of others, I have come to learn that expecting anything from anyone is bound to lead you to disappointment. Not even just from others alone, expecting too much from even yourself doesn’t always work out. I have been caught in instances where I expect things to just be a given. Whether I expect an A on an exam, a present for my birthday, to get into the college I want, or to be included in plans, having too many expectations for oneself will almost always lead to some sort of disappointment. And it’s a disappointment I don’t necessarily want to live with anymore.

As I graduated high school and was about to enter my first year of college, I had an incredible amount of expectations for myself. All I really wanted was to find a new group of people to call my best friends, a group of people who would make me feel the comfort of home in this new foreign place. I had incredibly high expectations for the friends I would make and for my freshman experience that I ended up making myself crazy about it. After my first semester of my freshman year, I told myself that I needed to stop expecting. I needed to stop having expectations for people because, the bottom line is, people aren’t going to change to be how you want them to be. At this point in our lives, we’re not changing for anyone. I told myself that I needed to stop expecting anything from anyone and instead, see what was being offered to me. I knew that if I stopped having such high expectations, I would appreciate the little things a lot more than I already did.

As I reluctantly came back for second semester, I was incredibly scared. I had just spent an entire semester trying so hard for things to just immediately fall into place. And, while things most definitely do fall into place for some, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll immediately happen for everyone. I was so scared to come back because I didn’t want to have to start all over again. I spent so long counting on people and believing that things would just happen for me, that I lost sight of reality. I told myself that I was going to stop expecting and start accepting; and so I did.

Here I am, practically done with my freshman year of college. While I have hit roadblocks and have taken an incredible number of detours, I’ve somehow (almost) made it out alive and in one piece. The second I stopped having expectations for my friendships and for my experiences in college, the second things began to fall into place exactly how I had always hoped they would. I realized that going through life with huge expectations leaves you with too much room for disappointing moments. As soon as I realized I was over disappointment, I decided I wanted to stay open minded. Because at the end of the day being open minded allows you to accept people and experiences for who and what they are instead of simply just expecting.