I’m really not a New Year’s resolutions person. Any big lifestyle changes I try to make at the beginning of the year almost always drop off by the end of the month, and any successes in my personal growth can’t be attributed to a specific time of the year. That’s not to say I don’t reflect more during this time, but rather that a more fitting name for this process might be New Year’s realizations.
The start of this year—and especially my second semester of college—got me thinking about what I might want to do differently this time around. On paper, I didn’t see anything that needed changing. I did well in my classes, got involved in activities that mattered to me, and got acclimated to my new environment. The results seemed to be exactly what I’d hoped for. I didn’t think too much of it—at least, not then.
Those thoughts returned during the first week of classes as I was receiving my syllabi and reviewing the long lists of readings and assignments. In those moments, I felt an unexpected sense of dread. I went through that same process a few times before I began to interrogate the feeling. Why did I already feel overwhelmed by time pressure and exhaustion? It wasn’t the subject matter or the act of learning itself that I dreaded. So why did I feel this way?
Why was I treating learning, this activity that I love, as though it was something I hated?
That realization made me think more deeply about my first semester and, more specifically, about my past years in school. Thinking back, I can’t remember a time where my educational mindset wasn’t in a constant state of optimization: maximizing results while minimizing time investment. That’s the standard we’re taught to strive for. We live in a world that prioritizes outcomes over processes—where GPAs quantify our efforts, jobs are viewed primarily as financial means, and numbers attempt to encapsulate human experiences that inherently transcend them.
I had foolishly believed I’d already moved past this optimization mindset simply because I chose to pursue an intellectually-stimulating education rather than one solely focused on financial gain. Still, these ideas of ‘achievement’ and ‘success’ are entirely pervasive in what we view as the ‘right’ way to be human. It’s much easier to type than to truly believe, but here’s my honest truth: Our lives aren’t just about getting closer to the unattainable highs we ascribe to our futures, but about the processes of the present moment in being who we want to be—not tomorrow, but today.
The reality is that we still do operate within a system where lives and livelihoods are determined on the basis of results, even if our humanity is sustained in processes. But we deserve more than the bare minimum, more than the mindset of completion and compartmentalization. When we have the opportunity, we should take our time. We should meditate and rethink and reflect, even if our educational (as well as our social, political, and economic) structures don’t always encourage it. Even if it’s not profitable. Especially then.
This year, just like any other year, I think the most important resolution we can make is to challenge ourselves more often. To challenge our behaviors, our outlooks, and our conceptions. My primary challenge for this year? Allowing myself the time, resources, and kindness to learn.