Click! Pessimism is knowing that when you have an essay due the next day that you'll have writers block.

Pessimist, el pesimista (Spanish), pessimiste (French), schwarzseher (German); No matter how you say it, a pessimist is a person who sees the glass half empty instead of half full, who takes the gloomiest possible view, and who believes that the evil in the world out-weights the good. Pessimists are everywhere; the student that just knows that he/she is going to flunk the test even though he/she spent hours studying, the co-worker that stresses over the next evaluation because they know their going to get demoted.

"Things are going to get worse before they get even worse." You wake up to a freezing cold room and realize that you accidentally left the fan on. You don your favorite outfit and go to fix breakfast. You empty the last of the cereal into your bowl and drown it in milk just to discover that the milk has gone sour.

English: The face of a black windup alarm clock

English: A CD/radio alarm clock by Roberts Radio. ...

A Quick Test for Optimism vs. Pessimism

You make it to school without further mishaps, just for your worst enemy to saunter up to you and inform you, in the most grating voice possible, that you have a huge zit right smack on the tip of your nose where no one could possibly miss it.

"Success is 1% inspiration, 9% perspiration, and 90% people's response to your 10%." You spend days trying to think of the best way to go about writing your next report, then you devote countless hours to creating the rough draft. You fret over whether or not your work is in line with your teacher's tastes. You then stay up till the wee hours of the morning critiquing and doing your best to catch all the mistakes that had escaped you the numerous other times you have read over it, just to receive a poor grade.

You're most definitely not a computer person...