Would you expect to see A SKELETON driving the car in the lane next to you on the highway? I did not. And it wasn’t like one of those adhesive stickers of Mr. Trump or of Pope Francis that you put on the window of your backseat so people think you are a chauffeur. It was a skeleton, sitting in the driver’s seat doing 55 mph on the highway. I was relieved to know he wasn’t driving alone because a person, the kind with skin and eyeballs, was sitting in the passenger seat. Upon further consideration I recalled that it is, in fact, possible to have a car with the wheel and pedals on the right side of the vehicle as they do in post office vehicles or in most of the cars in England and Europe.
It made me think about the expectations and assumptions under which we are continually operating. When you think about it, the most likely fountain from which our disappointments flow is that of Expectations. Whether expectations are reasonable, or unreasonable, is perhaps the grey area and can be subjective. But I am thinking about it. I was in a situation recently where I expected things to go a certain way… if the environment was what it should be … I thought all I had to do was my very best, be professional, be accurate in my task, and it would all go great. And it did not. It did not because my expectations were not the same as the other people involved in the situation. When the rubber met the road and changes needed to occur, no one was more disappointed than me.
I wasn’t just disappointed that things could not grow and build and move forward. I was disappointed that the people were not of the caliber that I initially presumed. What do you do with that? It shook me up. It made moving forward as uncomfortable as staying in the situation was… and that was pretty rough too.
So, I guess I am saying that the Life Lesson is, place your expectations carefully. People do not always represent themselves for who they truly are. Everyone has a back story. Every person has other influences working on them. You may think all people develop emotionally and personally at the same rate, that they mature and get professional and are people of their word. This is clearly not always the case.
Over twenty years ago, when I was teaching high school, a new student transferred in to our school. He was eager and bright and fit right into his peers… except something happened. In my class, he was initially firing his hand up in the air to answer questions. Then, he stopped. Apparently, another student had gotten to him on the side and dumbed-him-down. To be “cool,” he conformed to non-participation. It was a bummer to watch it happen. At the time, as a young teacher I did not know how to change that phenomenon. I kind of took it personally. However, if it happened now, I would have sliced that dialogue wide-open in class and gave a lecture on, “You only get in proportion to what you yourself bring to the table.” But I did not. Ten years later, I ran into that former student at a social gathering. The minute I saw his face, the disappointment of that whole thing came flooding right back to me. It had bothered me more than I realized at the time. I made a comment to the student about that and he said, “Miss A, people change.” In other words, he wasn’t that guy anymore. He learned to stand on his own two feet but back then my expectations of “high school kids” were, pun intended, too “high.” I agreed with him and thanked him for pointing that out.
The one thing I will say about all those kids that I taught during those years is that I was fond of each and every one of them. I remember their names and faces when I see them around town or on Facebook. I remember some of their stories. But nothing hits me harder than enduring the disappointment when I find someone who has not become the person of integrity that we teachers tried to educate and cultivate. We worked hard, and we expected to make a difference. Maybe sometimes I was just hoping against the odds… if they only knew.
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