Expectations

For those who don't know, this is Sputnik. I figured the name of the blog was appropriate simply because my interests are varied and where is there to get a better view of everything than from space? :)

Expectations are tricky part of our everyday lives. I can think back to multiple times in college, high school, and even elementary and middle school when I would get back graded tests and be disappointed or excited. Now the score that one gets would be relevant to the amount of studying they put into the exam, hence 'what you expect to get'. There were times when I would get back a test with a meager 75 on it and I would think how amazing is the fact that I managed to pass a test when I did not even pick up a book to study for it! There were, however, just as many situations where someone else in the class (or yours truly) would get back an 89 and be furious! Furious, why? Well when you have spent hours upon hours and days upon days studying for an exam and you miss the A by 1 point it can be rather frustrating.

Fast forward many years and we still see this on a daily basis. Take for example public companies announcing their quarterly and yearly reports. It is less relevant whether or not they make a profit as opposed to whether or not the clear their expectations. The best example of this is Exxon Mobil's recent quarterly report. They set yet another record of quarterly profit for a company! $11.68B in ONE QUARTER! That's $1,485.55/second! You would imagine in a world sans wall street this would be impressive, however, its not, the stock went down immediately!

You see, that's not a problem, its necessary for us as a community/society/family/individual to push each other. If we know we are capable of running a mile in less than 8 minutes, then setting a goal of 10 minutes would be an easy hurdle for us to clear. We [should] instead for ourselves put a goal of 7 minutes and work towards it, bettering our performance.

As a newly minted blogger, I am asking that you set your expectation level fairly high for me. This is ironic even for me, because at the beginning of the writing of this post my point was to state at the end that the expectation level be low, but then I would not be able to better myself. I cannot promise on the consistency of my posts, but whenever an idea, a quirky topic or something of interest beckons, then believe me, I will write about it!

Till next time.