Lately, I've been thinking more often about Skinner's studies on rats I learned about in high school. In one study, Skinner had three cages of rats. The cages were specially manufactured so that there was a lever the rats could press. Once the rats had been trained to press down the lever for a food pellet, the experiment changed so that one cage was always fed no matter what, the second was fed randomly, and the third was never fed at all.

In the end, the rats who were fed randomly were the only ones who kept pressing the bar, hoping that a pellet would come down.

I feel like this can be a metaphor for many things in my life right now. Will this stranger I talk to become a friend? If I join this club, will it turn out to be a bust? Will this boy turn out to be a jerk? If I turn in my application, will I get the publishing internship?

I'm tired of all the 'what if's.