expectations

I try to live in the land of half full.
When expectations aren't met it is disappointing.
I remember meeting with my spiritual director about the time my housemate moved in. I was asked if I had any expectations for my housemate. Yes, we signed an agreement about various things. But, my director pushed, do you have any expectations about community? Do you, for instance, hope to share meals together?

Eager to have the "right" answer, which I concluded must be to desire such community with my housemate, I replied, "well, I did not consider it, really. But perhaps that's one of the reasons for her living with me." And then went on to outline how impossible shared meals would be b/c of work and school and how I don't necessarily stick to a schedule about coming home to eat, etc. And she commented that perhaps my expectation was already set in not planning to eat together (still not sure if I got that answer right or not...)

Then, a couple weeks ago my new boss came to town. He brought my co-worker and I together to discuss how things were going between us, particularly in the places where we hand off pieces of the admissions process to one another. He started the conversation saying something akin to this, "It's been my experience that communication is key. Sometimes expectations are not met. But before gauging that, assess if the expectations you held were communicated to the other person. If they were not communicated, then the blame for meeting the expectation is in your lap..."

Which leads to now. Tonight, we started a new group of one of our Bachelor degree completion programs. The model of learning we employ requires a certain ratio of students. We were allowed to start this class being a few persons shy of that "magic" number. We did the "high touch" conversations the last week especially. We were grateful for the go ahead, honestly, but also, we knew that our small group was committed and eager to finish their degrees. I worked on my day off Friday attending to a few details. My co-worker called folks from his home on Saturday, striving to talk with each person individually.

And so tonight one of the folks, in our already small group didn't show.
We expected this student.

And even though the others showed, and truly, the glass is more than half full, I'm really disappointed.

And I don't want to tell my boss.

Rats.

(Oh the picture above is when GRACE came to town. And she's a published author. She even gave me an autographed copy of her book. It's in Korean so I can't enjoy much beyond the cover. But I'm every shade of proud of her. Go Grace!!)