When 2004 began to knock at Lindsey Simon’s door, she said she began to put some thought into what her New Year’s resolution would be. After much deliberation Simon said she has made the most important resolution she has ever made and directed it to the primary person in her life: her boyfriend, Neil.
As Father Time rings in a new year, many people are filled with an overwhelming feeling of rebirth and a sense of renewal. Not only is it a time for parties and late nights, it is the time to make the infamous New Year’s resolution. While New Year’s resolutions tends to be promises made easily in the excitement of a new beginning, many people quickly find out that their vows of good intentions fall to the wayside as they become victims of their own temptations.
“My resolution is to let my boyfriend know that I love him and to be a better friend to him,” said Simon, a junior general studies major. “Somewhere around the end of December I started to realize that I may have been making my boyfriend feel left out in my life.”
Simon said the rigors of school and work helped her realize that her boyfriend was taking the brunt of her bad moods.
“He saw me in my good moods but he was also the one around to see the bad ones,” Simon said. “I look back on that and I’m so sorry for all the things I’ve said throughout the past year. I want to make a new start this year and not take for granted what I’ve been given. I think that’s my real resolution.”
Making New Year’s resolutions is nothing new to Simon, but she said she is trying to stay away from renewing the normal pledges that fizzle out two weeks into January.
“I make the typical ‘I’ll stop biting my fingernails,’ a horrible habit broken only by fake nails year round, or the ‘I won’t drink sodas anymore,'” Simon said. “It only lasts for a couple of weeks. Then I drink one and the whole vicious cycle starts all over again.”
Even though some of the previous promises she has made to herself have failed, Simon is confident that she has the key to sticking to this one.
“To follow through on a resolution, my advice is to make one that is actually important to you — one that you think about and is not only beneficial to you but to other people also,” simon said. “A goal that will make you feel good for achieving when the year ends.”
Being the peacemaker is not always easy, and Ron Price said he has learned this the hard way in the past year. With the beginning of a new year, getting out of the middle of his friends’ conflicts is his motivation for a new resolution.
“My friends come to me with their problems and I try to help them all the time,” said Price, a senior political science major. “However, lately I have had some friends who are not getting along and that puts me in the middle of things. One friend tells me one bad thing about the other and so forth. So I end up spilling some info about one person to another and that usually makes matters worse.”
After not being able to make all of his friends happy, Price has resigned himself to not being the middleman and to keep his business to himself. New Year’s resolutions are not a habit of Price’s, but he said he feels one should set small goals and focus on accomplishing those. Price said he doesn’t place much importance on New Year’s resolutions, but he said setting small goals is a better practice.
“I never really make a resolution, or if I do, I just say it that night and forget it the next day,” Price said. “I usually don’t rely on one day to set a goal for myself. I think it’s better to make a habit of waking up every day and doing what you have to do.”
As Price begins to work at his resolution, he said he advises his friends to work things out for themselves.
When Randi Jones returned from studying abroad in Italy, she said she decided to work off the extra pounds from many nights of pasta dinners. For Jones’ new year she chose the reigning king of resolutions: to lose weight. Similar to many others, Jones said she is ready for a diet overhaul beginning at the first of the year.
“Before I went to Italy I worked out every day and now I need to get back into the habit,” said Jones, a junior architecture major. “I love junk food, and I really need to eat better also.”
Jones said she completes her resolutions about half the time, but this year she has formulated a plan and strategized about how she is going to carry out her goals.
“I try and put mine on a bulletin board that is easy for me to view,” Jones said. “If I see it every day I am more likely to be successful.”As Lindsey Simon’s boyfriend’s birthday rolls around, she said she thinks this resolution is kind of a birthday present for him. Looking forward to the New Year, Simon said she is excited about starting out with a clean slate.
“The beginning of the year is the first day of a 365-day trip,” Simon said.
“It is a good time to start things because you’re starting a whole new semester, a whole new year number, one that you forget for the first two weeks and write the previous year on everything you date. Maybe this isn’t even a New Year’s resolution after all. I just thought of something; New Year’s resolutions are possibly made to break. When you make a lifetime resolution, you’re really changing yourself because you’ve realized something. I’ll let you know the results on December 31, 2004.”