Glass Half-…?

 My personal philosophy is that being a glass half-full person is worse than being a glass half-empty. 

We’ve all been there — taken a test, and sometime in between leaving the classroom and checking your score on Schoology, you got your hopes up. Your friend also got 5 Cs in a row (it’s not until later you discover the right answers were 4 Bs in a row), you think you used all the right words on that FRQ or derived that equation correctly (no, no you didn’t, what you wrote doesn’t even exist), and in those hours or days before receiving your score, you start to think you might not have failed. Maybe you’re not cooked! Even an 80% is recoverable right? Worst case, surely the curve will save you?! But then. That fateful day comes. You open the grades page on Schoology. Pause — take a moment remember the time before, when you still knew joy. And- WHAT? Your course grade has dropped a whole letter grade and a half. You don’t even know how this could be possible. Utterly scared now, with shaky fingers, you click to find the test score and- OHMYGOD this is so so bad I can’t even believe this I got a 4/12 on the physics circuits test. 

And now you know why I’m rejecting my old, optimistic glass half-full perspective. It’s much better to lower your expectations than expecting more than you can deliver and ending up disappointing. There’s a second half to the saying “hope for the best”, and that’s “prepare for the worst.” If you don’t expect anything, you can’t be disappointed. Kind of turning into a defense mechanism now.