I have ninety-nine problems, and every single one of them has to do with expectations.

People expect too much. And, in doing so, they are automatically setting themselves up for disappointment. Wouldn’t it be wiser to just start off with low expectations, and then maybe end up surprised, if and when those expectations are surpassed?

Well, apparently the rest of the world hasn’t been able to understand this concept as of yet. Thus, I am being smothered by expectations. The thumb of life is squishing me down, but somehow, I’m still twitching. I’m not dead yet, but buckling under all this pressure sounds pretty good to me right about now.

The most irritating aspect of expectations is that everyone has different ones! Literally everyone. Let me start making you a list, shall I?

First, there are my teachers. Now, don’t get me wrong, I respect teachers and see them as an incredibly valuable and necessary component to our society. They dedicate their lives to enriching the lives of others with little incentive (obviously, money is not their main motivator, at least not in North Carolina) besides the fact that, as educators, they provide us with the means to progress in life.

Only they don’t. I mean I’m sure they desperately try, but they tend to forget that, in order to progress in life, one must first possess a life. That’s right. With the amount of homework that EACH teacher gives me every night, I probably shorten my lifespan by a few years, or months at least. Okay, okay, so that’s not true, but it is true that, as students, we’re bogged down in a swamp of papers. I understand that teachers have a responsibility to prepare their students, which entails homework to practice learned concepts, but I am being completely honest when I say much of my tossing and turning in bed these nights stems from unfinished or yet-to-be-assigned homework assignments and projects. I have certainly met a few magnificent teachers though, and this judgement is not being passed on all of teacher-kind. However, I find it increasingly difficult to find hope when I realize that, after muddling through high school, years more of schooling awaits me in college. The horror stories of today’s age are no longer about witches that will snatch up children and throw them into boiling cauldrons, but rather about whatever unwelcome future awaits someone who elects not to receive a college education, as if the thousands of dollars we pay to throw our caps up at the end of a graduation ceremony and wave around a piece of paper with our names and the word “Degree” on it secures any amount of stability in our lives.

Speaking of which, there are one-hundred-and-one things that are expected of a person who is trying to get into college. A person must excel academically by earning a high GPA, straight-A grades, and a top class ranking. They should score well on standardized tests, like the SAT and the ACT. But that’s not all. Oh, no. A person also needs to excel outside of school; they need to participate in sports and clubs and also showcase leadership skills in their clubs. Plus, they need to give back to their community and partake in community service. But even that’s not all. Oh no, no, no. Because every person will have been academically gifted, inclined towards leadership, and selfless enough to acquire just the amount of volunteer hours required, so now they need to do something else entirely that will set them apart from their identicals.

This brings me to the next group of expectation-soaked people: society. Man, with all these expectations going around, I wish I could say “Expecto Patronum,” and make them disappear. Kidding, kidding, I’m not completely clueless; I know that spell is only for keeping away bed-bugs. Ha. Ha. Ha. Kidding again.

Society is perhaps the most to blame for stressing me beyond my years (NOTE: I said “perhaps”). To begin with, it’s expected that one goes to college, and that, on its own, is a nice, big can of worms that’s been pried open, and now the slimy, slithery, mucus-covered pseudosnakes are pouring out of it so fast the lid can’t even be put back on to contain them. And now you’ve just got a whole bunch of squiggly fishbait struggling around your feet to move even an inch, and you feel all gross because you get this tingling sensation, like they’re touching you all over. I feel like I have been asked this series of questions my entire life: “What do you want to be when you grow up? What field do you want to go into? What do you want to major in?” When I was younger, these questions weren’t so hard to answer. Paleontologist was my first choice (yeah, no, the profession of princess was never on my list; I was quite boring, even at a young age). It was an easy decision to make because anything and everything seemed possible. Society starts us off in life by elevating our own expectations to such a point that everyone in the room could say he or she wanted to be president and believe it. Now, when someone asks me, and, for some reason, everyone feels the need to ask me (“Oh, only a year left till you graduate. Do you know what you want to do. You know, when I was your age...blah, blah, blah,”), I respond with a blank stare and a shrug. I feel like a Magic 8-Ball that’s being shaken up repeatedly, and yet the only answer popping up is “Ask again later.” What’s even more annoying is, on those rare occasions when I ponder whether I’d like to go into an arts-related field, as soon as the thought leaves my mouth, I’m swarmed by bees stinging me with advice I don’t want to hear: a fine arts career won’t pay enough and it is a narrow field to find jobs.

Oh, by the way, I just had to put this in here: I know that “Expecto Patronum” is for warding off dementors.

Fourth on the list is my mom. I love my mom with all my heart, but, sometimes, the woman has her head screwed on a little too tight. She’s got this fantastical fantasy notion that I will get accepted into Stanford, and then she can move to California with me. Let’s not forget that Stanford is one of the hardest, if not the hardest, colleges/universities to get into in the country, so this places a lot of pressure on me, because, sure, I’d like to go somewhere in California, but the chances of it being Stanford are the same as Donald Trump being a good president: absolutely none. Also, when a kid graduates and goes off to college, the idea is not that the parent is supposed to follow her when she leaves. But apparently, this concept is hard to grasp for some (not to name any names, but, ahem, mother, I’m looking at you).

Fifth on my list, and, in this case, last but definitely not the least, is my dad. I hesitate to even call him that because I really don’t consider him a father. That probably sounds terribly sad, or makes me look like an ungrateful brat (mind you, I’m not denying anything), but, in my eyes, he has barely filled any of the “quotas” of fatherhood. He provides money for the family. That’s about it. Of course, that, in and of itself is a lot, but that shouldn’t be it. He takes care of us financially, but his work consumes him. It’s like he tossed a coin: heads, he chooses family, and tails, he chooses work. Tails won. He has no life outside of his business, which doesn’t even bother me because my least favorite times of the year are when my dad is home. He travels about half the year and is home the other half.

I say that my favorite times of the year are when he’s not home because he’s pretty unbearable to be around. His personality, oh, his personality. You can’t see me right now, but I’m shaking my head and sighing. There is no end to his preaching. He thinks he knows everything, that there is only one, right way to do things, and it’s the way he does it. He constantly preaches to people about their poor life choices and is always prepared to hand out little servings of disappointment. They come on nice, decorative, China plates that practically ask to be thrown against a wall. He places the most pressure on me because he expects so much from me, which some might say is a good thing because it means he has faith in me. No. He sets these expectations based on his self-created suppositions of me, but I am nothing similar to the figurine he has molded out of clay.

For that matter, I am nothing like his mold or anyone else’s. At least, I don’t want to be. A clay figure is stuck in place. Once the clay has dried, it can’t bend or change shape. I feel as constricted as that. I know I am a lot luckier than a lot of other people in this world, but I’ve hit a brick wall that’s come crashing down on top of me. Expectations are piled on, not just me, but every young adult nowadays. The fast-paced world we live in doesn’t allow us even a moment’s breath and the notion that “life is hard” seems to be the biggest understatement I’ve ever heard. And I’m only a teenager! I haven’t even gone through half of my life yet (well, hopefully not), but I could say I have already experienced a midlife crisis. Or twenty. My overly-dramatic ways and cynical view of life, as mine is now, is a direct result of expectations placed on me and the constant fear that I will never be able to meet these expectations. It seems the future turns bleaker the brighter I try to make it.