The end of the fall quarter means beginning a new year—a time when we write our vague goals in pretty notebooks with the hopes of achieving them by the following Christmas, and unfortunately forgetting about them mid-February. Here are some new, more specific suggestions for our common New Year’s resolutions to put a reasonable, practical, and interesting spin to your plans for 2015!
1. Resolution: Go to the gym every day
Every January many of us pack our cute totes and duffel bags with sneakers and tell ourselves that there IS time every day to squeeze in an hour at the gym. This is a great and healthy resolution to have! But why is it such a hard one to keep? As full-time students juggling classes, work, and internships, going to the gym in between our set schedules can actually be a little bit stressful. And when midterm weeks come around, it’s easy for us to talk ourselves out of our gym grind.
Instead: Buy a group exercise pass
For $25 a quarter you can have unlimited access to Zumba, body pump, kick boxing, tumbling, and cycling classes with certified instructors at the ARC. The classes are laid out so you can come in during the morning, afternoon, or evening according to your class and work schedule. Buying a group exercise pass with your roommates or friends is a great way to motivate each other to go to the gym, especially since you’re paying money for it and won’t want it to go to waste! I bought one last winter to motivate myself to go to the ARC, and I had a blast de-stressing and ending my long day at school by doing Zumba at night.
2. Resolution: Don’t buy junk food anymore
We’re college students, isn’t junk food inevitable? Whether it’s for socializing with friends or buying something to-go because you’re running late, there are fast food places everywhere. Not wanting to indulge in greasy food anymore is another healthy resolution to have, but it’s definitely a hard one to keep. How do we control our cravings?
Instead: Substitute a few things with healthier options
If I look at my bank account history and add up all the times I’ve bought ice cream, I’d probably be surprised. Ice cream isn’t expensive, but it’s one of the things I crave the most. Around Thanksgiving, my roommate made a healthy batch of candied yams and put the leftovers in the fridge for the rest of us. I didn’t heat up the yams and ate a small scoopful in a bowl, and lo and behold, a substitute for ice cream! The smooth texture, sweetness, and cold temperature of the yams were very similar to ice cream. Now I just bake sweet potatoes and mash them up before sticking them in the fridge, and it feels great to know I’m eating something that tastes similar to ice cream, but is a lot healthier.
3. Attend your professor’s office hours all the time
We want to get close to our professors, but the hardest part is going over the first hurdle of introducing yourself and talking to them during the first couple weeks of the quarter when we don’t need as much help. As the quarter progresses we tell ourselves “Oh, there’s always next week!” or “I think I understand this concept well enough, I don’t need to go,” but before we know it, the quarter has come to an end and we didn’t get to go to as many office hours as we wanted to. A lot of the time, students are actually shy or scared to go to office hours because we think our questions are dumb, or we’re afraid our professors might look down on us for turning assignments in late or for missing a few classes, etc. (On a side note: there are no such things as dumb questions. Seriously!)
Instead: E-mail your professors every week
Professors check their e-mails all the time, and if you e-mail them a question they’ll always get back to you. I e-mailed a professor I wanted to get close to, and it helped me feel more comfortable approaching him. It helped him remember and recognize my name too! After the third week or so, I started coming in to his office hours just to drop by and say hello or ask for help on my paper ideas, and he gladly welcomed me in because we were already comfortable talking via e-mail. On days I didn’t go to his office, I’d send him an e-mail on anything I was confused about or my own opinions about a text we read, and he sometimes mentioned my ideas in the following class session! E-mailing him frequently helped me get closer to him and really made me look up to him as an awesome teacher.
A New Year’s resolution list is a great thing to have (I’m a very big fan of making lists), and you should always make goals for yourself that are specific and doable for YOU. It’s your list, make sure you feel good about yourself and don’t push yourself too hard! We do have 365 days to do them after all!