Emotion: Surprise

Those who know me know that I am not one for surprises. Surprise party for me? Nty. Surprise gifts? Maybe — but I get scared they come with contingencies.

Nowadays, as long as it doesn’t involve getting into water, I know what to wear, and it doesn’t end too late, then I think I can accommodate something. But is it really a surprise if I know some of the details? Naw, I didn’t think so.

However, with this post, I’ll make it a bit more positive and write about the times I surprised myself.

Getting a D in Geometry — Okay, the first one might be a sad one? But genuinely, I was surprised that I got a D in Geometry when I was in high school. The thing is, I was a good student. I did well in algebra (also, wtf is that name for math?), and I even took trigonometry in HS. But geometry? Bruh.

Something about proving theorems and then making guesses about the sides like there were secret rules to shapes. I just didn’t get it. And the teacher didn’t help at all. I was surprised by that.

So I surprised myself again and took summer school to try to change the grade — and I did. I got a C. But hey! That was enough to get me into college.

Getting into my undergrad was a surprise for sure. Not because of the C in geometry — like I said, I was a good HS student with a 3.80 GPA — I’m just terrible at math, and that still checks out today. I thought I was going to Humboldt State because I didn’t think I’d get into SDSU, but getting that acceptance letter was pretty cool.

The better surprise, though, was during undergrad. A friend of mine and I took a Filipino class for fun, and we legit thought we were going to fail. I took it credit/no credit, never did the homework, and always said “idk” when I got called on in class.

So during winter break, we accepted that we were going to fail / get no credit. We even calculated how it would affect our GPA. And to our surprise — we passed. I got the credit, and my friend got a B. The curve was truly in our favor.

Another surprise was getting into counseling graduate school when I hadn’t planned on it and hadn’t worked in the field for about a year. I was so burnt out from undergrad and just wanted to be for a little. I was working as a barista and applied to one school. To my surprise, I got in.

Fast forward about nine years after that, and I was surprised to pass my licensing exams to become a mental health clinician.

Another surprise was living on my own — and thriving. I am constantly surprised by how much it costs to live independently in SoCal. Inflation is too high, there’s no help for the middle class, and apparently there are just companies making a fuck ton of money that don’t even know what to do with it.

Another surprise — and probably the one that still surprises me, even though there’s a history of it — is the help I get from people I care about, and who care about me. It does take effort for me to get myself back up again, and that part is on me. But if I need moral or emotional support, and I know what to ask for, who to ask, and how to ask — I’m always surprised by the warmth people rally with.

Surprise is a core emotion because it forces us to pause and reassess — is this a threat, or is this something I can move toward? It interrupts autopilot. When the surprise is internal, when I catch myself being more resilient, more capable, or more tenacious than I expected, it reframes the story I tell myself about who I am. Those moments don’t erase the hard parts, but they remind me that I’ve survived more than I give myself credit for. And when I surprise myself like that, I hope it never stops happening — because it means I’m still growing, still learning, and still choosing to show up even when I don’t know exactly how things will turn out.