Getting excited is useless
Getting excited is useless
#35 - the power of creativity, in Google and in cards
Hi there,
I’m still alive, despite having an exam every day this week, including one with THREE! Yes, the kind exam boards decided to put German and Economics together for the Wednesday PM spot, since very few students do it… which meant that I and 7 others in my year had a triple treat (or trouble or threat, as Grammarly suggests I convert ‘treat’ to) of English Language, Economics, a German Listening and Reading. 5 hours and 15 minutes in exam conditions - a ‘grand total’ indeed. But, since I preach getting the difficult things out the way, it now means I’ve done a third of my papers! Still, it does make me wonder how there are so many GCSEs that despite the whole marathon spanning five weeks, there are clashes. Bonkers, much like the rest of the education system.
Anyways, those without exams, how are you doing? Warmer weather delighting you or torturing you? Any tales or thoughts would be gleefully accepted as inspiration at a time when my mind is too busy thinking about meat-free burgers and crushing scorpions, features of my English Language and Biology exam. I’ll let you figure out which one is which.
Highlight of the week: sat here contemplating. Recency bias, maybe the awesome chicken biryani I have just relished.
The buildup to the first exam is real. And it can be terrifying. No matter how prepared you are, we all feel the nerves and the butterflies on edge, mixed in with some anxiety and stress.
Outside the hall, abiding by advice from YouTube videos I’d watched in the run-up to ‘The Big Day’, I didn’t want to talk to anyone, to avoid them worrying me or surprising me. If people asked me any questions related to Computer Science, I kept the answer short and walked away. If I did speak to somebody, it wasn’t about the exam ahead. Still, despite these ‘coping mechanisms’, I was pacing one way and then the other. I can’t tell whether it was stress but I certainly felt that feeling of ‘This is it’.
But as soon as the clock hit 1 and we got going, it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. At the end of the exam, the rush I felt for the momentous occasion quickly subsided and it seemed like any old mock exam. As the week wore on, the next-day exam didn’t seem as scary as before. Of course, it was significant but the wrapping around it wasn’t as terrifying.
My point is the anticipation and excitement/anxiety building up to an event is far stronger than the emotion you’ll feel during the event itself. This applies to both positive and negative outcomes.
When we were looking for a new house a couple of years ago or even when we were planning to go on holiday in India, my sister and I were often found fantasising about where we’d put our books or which ice cream shop we’d go to. My mum became the ‘boring one’ advising us, “Don’t keep your hopes up. We’ll wait and see what happens”. It was meant in good intention because a) if we didn’t go to India/the new house, the disappointment will be immense or b) if it isn’t as sweet as it seems, the disappointment is likely to.
Similarly, earlier this year, I had acted in haste and misused my powers on Microsoft Teams, removing someone. This then developed into a full-blown argument that was eventually stopped by the teacher-in-charge’s message of “Gentlemen.....this conversation is now over.” I planned to see him the next day but the night before, my mind was racing with what might happen. Will he give me my first demerit point? Have I harmed my reputation? Will he kick me out of the team? In the end, it was a gentle reminder to me that whilst I was right to do what I did, it was his job “to be the bad cop, not mine”. Hmm, not that bad after all.
And so my advice is to keep expectations tamed, stopping them from going wild. But then I thought about why we have expectations in the first place. I guess it’s a way for our mind to (quantifiably or qualitatively) judge how good/bad something is. It, therefore, seems natural to set expectations - so we know what to expect, and so how successful/failing something has been.
One way of reducing the anticipation is by realising that the event/experience is just a moment in time, a drop in your ocean-sized life -
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Having just read through my notes, I figured out that my inspiration for today’s Ray of Sunlight was actually a musing over the creation of YouTube Premieres and why a simple video was being premiered (uploaded to be viewable a few hours later. I then realised that the excitement and anticipation you’d get from seeing when it was being played is way better and way more attractive for YouTube than the video just appearing in your feed. As my English teacher would say, it builds tension which then transforms into watch time for the YouTuber when the video is released.
Podcast of the week 🎙️
WIRED Gadget Lab: Google Gadgets Galore
I don’t listen to it a lot but when I do, I never regret it. Some cool new updates from the world’s 2nd favourite search engine (after Bing, of course…)
Article of the week 📰
How I Handle Long Email Delays
I was reminded of this when scribing today’s post. Makes me chuckle, every time.
Quote of the week 💬
“Nothing is as good or as bad as it seems” - Scott Galloway
An idea from an NYU Professor, introduced to me by Morgan Housel in his book, The Psychology of Money. Internalising this concept doesn’t mean that you live your life like a neutral robot. My take on it is that it acts as an insurance policy when you can be zen enough to remind yourself of this.
Good luck with exams this week!
Adi