You know the drill. As soon as the clock struck twelve on New Year’s Eve, you knew this time around would be different. Why? Because YOU would be different. A better, healthier, smarter, more time-efficient version of yourself.
But like Cinderella’s luck at the stroke of midnight, suddenly it’s January 22 and you’re no closer to your goals than you were on December 31. No worries, you tell yourself. January isn’t over yet.
In the era of ‘new year, new me,’ all those #livelaughlove type posts spread their positivity propaganda and preach to believe in the best in you. Bullshit.
Because let’s be real… it’s looking more like 2020-two this year, and it already looks like things are going to crap.
So we’ll be realistic and tell you about all the goals you won’t (or didn’t) actually keep up with this year. Don’t worry—it’s like this most years, isn’t it?
The fitness resolution
Pop psychology stats say that up to 70 per cent of gym memberships are activated January 1. Predictably, hardly any go through with it come the last weeks of the month, let alone the end of the year.
I mean, part of the resolution magic is to think “ah, NEXT year I’ll be a better version of myself,” isn’t it? So like every serial procrastinator, it’s no wonder that when the time to hit the gym actually rolls around all motivation has suddenly disappeared without a trace.
And let’s be real — who wants to go to the gym five days a week when January has the shittiest weather, classes start and — if you’re an international student — you spend the first two weeks beating your holiday jet lag? Not me for sure.
The ‘I’ll quit vaping’ resolution
This is perhaps simultaneously both the funniest and the saddest resolution on this list. It’s funny because you know that nobody’s gonna follow through with it. It’s sad for the same reason.
Each year we promise ourselves that we’ll bid adieu to our nicotine addictions in the new year, throw out the vape for good, and embrace our long-mistreated pair of lungs again. Yeah… right.
If this is a call-out post for you, so be it! Because guess what, pretty much 80 per cent of this campus smokes out of some type of device. One has to only walk down Main Mall in between classes (whenever they go back in person…) to find out.
The fuck-up is that most vape to blow off (hah) steam from work frustrations, others as an aspect of social life. Well, the pandemic has destroyed one and added a LOT more of the other — I’ll let you guess which is which.
But with January rolling in with the bright promise of shitty deadlines, it’s no wonder many of us will fail this resolution pretty soon.
The readings resolution
Ah, this one! The one universal resolution for university students all around the world: “I’ll keep up with my readings this year!”
We say this one with such faith in ourselves as though come January 1, we expect the day to have 27 hours instead of 24 and to have removed the variable of procrastination from our personal equations.
This resolution has plagued humanity perhaps from the time of Socrates — we’re convinced that homework has been a concept since then. Except old Soc didn’t have to balance five courses, Zoom fatigue, a competitive friend circle, recruiting for jobs and seasonal depression.
So while we encourage you to keep up with your readings, we acknowledge that we are human, after all. And if that means falling behind on one night of readings to go cider-tasting with the gals, so be it!