What Are the Odds?

Last year I learned a new game. It's called What Are the Odds and how it works is person A suggests something foolish for person B to do and asks what the odds are. Person B then chooses a number (usually 10) and person C will count down from 3. After 1, person A and person B will simultaneously say a number between 1 and 10. If it is the same number, person B has to do what person A asked. The higher the odds, the less likely person B is to have to complete the task.

Recently, many of my friends have been asking about when I will know if I was accepted to the schools I applied to transfer to. I've been trying not to get my hopes up because frankly, I have no idea what the odds are. I know that often a higher percentage of transfer applicants are accepted than freshman applicants and it is a smaller pool but I have no idea how I stack up against the other applicants. Basically, it's just caused me a lot of stress so far. But that's not what got me thinking about odds. Last night I was talking with a friend and we got into a deep conversation about family and illness and I was recounting my mom's cancer story. She had a unique type of tumor that affects only 1 in 1,000,000 people and at the time there was a 1 in 5 rate of survival of 10+ years. Needless to say, it was an extremely unique, unfortunate circumstance and it was hard to believe she could be that 1/5 of 1/1000000. It still chokes me up to talk about it because we got so lucky.

We love to hear story of people defying the odds. Whether it's the Cubs rising up to the occasion and coming close to fulfilling the Back to the Future prediction of them winning the 2015 World Series or someone conquering cancer, we always want to believe that the odds can be in our favor. We want to believe we are the exception to the rule and that miracles can happen every day and to ordinary people. Disney taught us to believe that. Of course there also movies like "He's Just Not That Into You" and unfortunate, sad cancer stories that come along to remind you that's not always the case, but I guess the point is that even though you're not always the exception and the odds won't always be in your favor, to believe that they can be and believe it'll work out in the end.