Expectation by James Aged 18

Expectation

Expectation is something we all deal with all day, every day. Whether it be parents, bosses or maybe even friends. We are expected to be doing something.  The first subject of the matter I will be going into is indeed the dreaded by many, parents.

Even from birth parents have expectations from their children. While they may never admit it, they all have an image of sorts of what they wish for their child to be. My parents never told me what to be, instead letting me find my own path in my education. They had expectations of me, which helped me get the main two, English and Maths out of the way completely.  I got enough grades from my initial GSCEs to get into college. Now, college was one of the ideas thrown at me from my parents. They offered many suggestions, jobs, apprenticeships, however college was the pick for me. After which they supported me during my college years, as I went through some troubles during the first year which I wouldn’t have gotten through without their support. They’ve never had any real expectations of me, in terms of what they wanted me to actually be, rather leaving that for me to discover. However they have always had the expectation for me to succeed. To my knowledge, I have succeeded to meet their expectations.  Now it moves on to their current expectations of me in terms of career. While I want to pursue a career in creative writing, they are supporting me as much as they can to be able to live that dream of mine.

Along with parents come the next subject, Teachers and Bosses. To any youngster, teachers may as well be their bosses. Viewing what they saw as law and obeying it to the dot. In terms of behaviour I always respected my teachers, being sure to never cause trouble and for the most part I never did. Homework was another matter entirely however I always got all classwork done in time, if not sooner.  In my experience, although teachers get paid the same either way, they do their best to make sure their students are performing the best they can.  During my entire high school learning my teachers had high expectations of me, most I met in terms of grades. Then I get to sixth form. I took ICT, Health and social care, Computer aided design and Business studies. While I was able to do the tasks set for me, I began to develop some awkwardness in social situations. And since I was in a room full of other people everyday I fell behind in my work, finding myself completely unable to concentrate while surrounded by others. I was soon to fall out of said sixth form, as I was not able to keep up with the expectations that my tutors had of me. After that I joined a military training club, where I stayed for a few weeks and quite enjoyed the experience. There were quite low expectations of me as I was quite weak, however I did what I could and performed to the little expectations I had. The trainers there were able to help keep me motivated too, allowing me to push myself to the limits I had. Unfortunately due to my eczema I had to drop out, learning at the same time I was unable to join the Royal Air Force for the same reason. That was quite a big hit to my motivation as I had wanted to be that for quite some, so I chose to go down another route in the form of IT. I took a level 3 IT course at College Cambria, where there were extremely high expectations of me. For a good reason, I was able to do the work there with ease. For the first half of the year I aced everything set of me and got the highest grades achievable that was what everybody had expected of me. However soon I began to lose motivation, deciding for myself that I don’t need to pass through distinctions and could instead just pass with, well, a pass. This is where I began to once more fall behind my expectations, as my tutors had expected me to achieve distinctions in every assignment and knew I was capable of doing so. As time passed their expectations shrunk to match my work, and that is where it stayed  ever            since.

My third point is friends. Friends will always expect things of somebody, as you’ll usually fall under one category or another. I fell into a more twin category, where sometimes I was silent and anti-social, and others I was out-going and silly. As such they always expected one of the two and I found it difficult to be anything that wasn’t expected of me. I always found expectations from friends were one of my strongest motivators, as expectations from those we like, we are usually more inclined to live up to. Even online I am known as a more silly person, where those twin categories come in once more. Along with friends comes the most important expectations, self-expectation. I have always had low self-expectations, only then be decently surprised when I surpassed them. It was a great way to motivate myself as it would always give me a good feeling that I was doing well. My self-expectation for one thing however, gaming, has always been outrageously high. I needed to be the best at my favourite game for most of my life, World of Warcraft. Though recently I have stopped playing it, up until then I was a high performing player and had achieved many things that kept me going. Once I quit that, I found I that it was a boost to my life as I could focus on other things. Overall, self-expectations keeps a person going. If a person has high expectations of themselves then they will be more motivated to perform to please themselves, however those with low expectations like myself are more than happy to pass even by the barest means.

Expectations of gender are another topic of discussion that many try to avoid. While I am not exactly the most masculine male on the earth, there are certain things than men just don’t do. One of these things is talk about more personal problems. While women, in my experience, have been quite open about this subject. Men too have these problems that most try to hide, at least from other men. I’ve found that women are able to make a man bring out that side of them far easier than men can. It is expected of them that they are the ‘stronger’ of the two genders and therefore can handle their problems alone. Another problem are subtle things, such as the way the different genders walk. Typically it is assumed women walk with more of a sway than men, and that men just, well, don’t care all that much for how they walk. To add to the different expectations of gender, women are expected to wear make-up and different products to make themselves look more beautiful, while it is frowned upon for men to do the same thing. However that’s not the worst thing in the world, as men can use products such as shaving cream and are allowed beards to stylise or to simply grow out or even shave. Women are expected to shave elsewhere, such as under their arms as well as their legs. While for men it is expected to not shave those areas, and sometimes even compare how hairy it is.