Anna-Catherine Kueng ~ Assistant Editor
On New Year’s Eve, many people start to talk about the upcoming year and everything they want to do, see, and experience. They may even make resolutions and share them with friends and family. Maybe you partake in this tradition and are successful, or maybe you are one of the people who broke their resolutions just a week after 2019 began; I am neither.
For 2019, I am making no resolutions. Before you begin to worry that I am turning into an unproductive college student, or some version of a sloth, I need to explain my reasoning. I do not make resolutions because I know I cannot live up to all of them. That may sound like a terrible answer, but when a year comes to an end, I do not want to focus on all the things I did not achieve. I want to look at everything I did achieve and not feel like my year was wasted if I did not live up to my resolutions.
Although I do not make specific resolutions, there are always goals in the back of my head that I secretly want to accomplish. For example, for 2018, I hoped I would run in a 10k and conquer my shyness. If I had made those my resolutions, it would appear that I failed to achieve what I hoped for last year. I did not run in a 10k and I still get nervous when I get called on during class. But, if I use a perspective that gives myself grace, 2018 was actually an awesome year. I may have not run in a 10k, but I did run in three 5ks and improved my mile time significantly. I did not conquer my shyness, but I did play the piano for my graduation baccalaureate service, I read my essay in front of strangers at a scholarship banquet, I gave a commencement speech, I made friends at a brand new school, and I did a 30 minute class presentation for the first time in my life.
I achieved a lot more than I had bargained for in 2018, and I experienced a lot of things I had not expected such as getting a job, going to a UNC basketball game, finding a waterfall while hiking, and ziplining on my second day of college. The thing is, there is no way to really know what a year will bring. I may hope that something will happen, but then it doesn’t. On the contrary, something may happen that I would have never thought of in my wildest dreams. I do not make resolutions because I do not want to plan any part of my year; I just want to let it happen. When I look back on a year, I do not want to say that went exactly how I planned it, but I want to think that went nothing like I had expected, but it was still good.
However, if you do make resolutions, that is awesome too. Everyone has a different view on what a new year means and everyone has a different way of tackling life. Whether you make resolutions or not, I do hope you are looking forward to everything 2019 is going to bring. I know I am.
