On preparing for the worst versus hoping for the best

Jen Xu
6 min readApr 1, 2024

I’ve recently started to wonder if I really do see the world too differently than some people — could it explain why I just never feel like I belong anywhere?

In a lab meeting among other students last year, we discussed ways to ensure people stopped cutting through the lab because it could disrupt data collection, because some of our doors are very heavy and loud (and we have 2 sets, which is how the cutting through occurs, of course). I suggested that we could get some velcro signs for the door that could say things like “stop. do not enter —sensitive data collection in process” — on a red stop sign. The signs could be placed on our doors, which are glass but frosted — you can still see through the doors, so any sign would be a very bright pop of color that you literally could not miss.

Our current method is a small dial on the door frame — which I rarely ever glance at or remember to change. Which is a problem for me — which I will get into later. Well, my idea got shut down somewhat. I got frustrated but thought, okay, well, I’ll just try again later, or it might not affect me anyway, so it’s fine.

Recently I realized that everyone else may have just thought — “well, what if people just stopped cutting through the lab altogether? They could just be better about that.”

For some reason, I didn’t consider that possibility for even a second. All I thought was, we have a problem, and our problem is free human will. We can request no lab…

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Jen Xu

Athletic trainer, PhD student, coffee lover. I write about fitness, mental health, being Asian-American, and personal growth.