Murphy's Law, for better or worse

Even though rush has been over for a week now, my life is still busy. And, Murphy's Law will continue to rear its head. For those who are unaware:

Murphy's Law: If anything can go wrong, it will.

Now, there are many corollaries of this law, mostly applying to specific situations. Some are not as cynical as Murphy's Law itself.

Corollary 1: Everything will end up contrary to your preparations.

So, for example, if I was speeding, and knew my behavior was likely to get me a ticket, and then turned to my passengers warning that I would get pulled over any minute now, the fact that I make it home without so much as seeing a police car is an application of Corollary 1. Not that this happened to me this past weekend, or anything. Of course not.

Sometimes, you just have to go on the theme of the original law. For instance: If you hit it off with a girl and plan to call her later, you will inevitably meet her boyfriend in the next 48 hours. Not that that happened to me either. Not at all.

I guess the somewhat circuitous moral of the story is that you always need to be prepared for the unexpected. Don't fall in love with your plans, because they're most likely going to be completely destroyed. This is something I've learned by running tabletop games for the last 7 years. The more you plan, the more gets abandoned sooner. It goes without saying in the game setting, so it shouldn't be too surprising in real life either.

Where did this come from? Well, there was a big job fair last week, and I've felt like my job search this academic year has been one giant application of Murphy's law. Additionally, I had a long conversation with a few people about fear of failure in social situations. And I realized something: dating is like running. You've got to feel the burn.