Although a lot of people are sick and tired of New Year’s Resolutions, I don’t mind them. First of all, I love to make lists, so that is a definite bonus.
Second, to me New Year’s Resolutions are a positive thing—a plan for growth.
Sure, I will fail to achieve some of my resolutions. I might fail epically. But at least there is a chance for me to make some well-defined progress if I so choose, and I like that.
Setting Goals
I think that the best thing you can do when making resolutions is to choose things that are realistic.
For example, I want to lose weight this year (who doesn’t?). But that is not my resolution. Instead, I have resolved to take the steps that will enable me to lose weight.
By making your resolutions into small, realistic steps, you will always know how to work toward achieving your goals.
I might not know how to eliminate all of my non-student loan debt and take control of my finances in one fell swoop, but I can always sit down and make a budget.
Keeping Track
The other way I am trying to increase my odds of success is to tack up my resolutions in a visible place in my apartment. If I get used to seeing it day after day and stop paying attention to it, then I will move it to a new spot.
I am also using the fabulous Streaks app on my iPhone for some of my goals. It allows me to create separate calendars for each goal, specifying how often I want to do it.
Making it Happen
Perhaps the biggest key to success for me is to make it easy. If the exercise equipment is out in the garage, it’s not going to get used. Pull out the book you want to read and put the scale in an obvious place. You probably won’t even start if too many obstacles stand in the way of your goals.
The basic principle is to make achieving your resolutions as simple as possible. Even then, you might not do everything you would like to do this year. But hopefully you will get a little closer to your goal than last year.
I sat down to write my New Year’s Resolutions for 2011 yesterday and I suddenly realized that I couldn’t even remember the Mid-Year Resolutions that I had made six months ago. Obviously I could stand to track my resolutions a little bit better!
I will at least be putting the list up on my wall this year, as well as in my planner, and using the Streaks app for iPhone for some of them. But before I post my 2011 Resolutions, I want to see how last year’s resolutions fared:
- Read the Bible in 90 Days: I managed to make it entirely through Kings before I moved. Then school swept me away, but I did also read the entirety of Chronicles because it was assigned the first week of one of my classes.
- Complete NaNoWriMo: This was accomplished with some dirty tactics. I’m hoping to have a more legitimate win next year.
- Earn a 3.5 for fall semester: Check! I did even better than that.
- Achieve 5,000 fitness minutes: Wow, I stopped tracking this one completely, but I’m quite certain I didn’t make it.
- Apply to study abroad: I looked into this the first week of school and eventually realized that going to Oxford is simply not what God has planned for my summer. We’ll see about next year.
- Have one date night a week: This was a partial success. Matthew and I had a few actual dates and a lot of random evenings watching many episodes of Doctor Who together.
- Stick to the monthly budget: This one makes me grimace. I would say that we have gotten a little bit better about making a budget together, but we still struggle to stick to it.
- Blog three times a week: Ha! Everyone knows I failed this one.
- Take Sunday off: This went out the window very quickly once the semester began, but I still think that it’s important.
- Eat fewer processed foods: SUCCESS! Matthew and I buy few packaged foods and eat at home most of the time. At one point this semester, I ended up eating oatmeal with brown sugar on it because we had no other sweets in the house.
Final tally? 2 great successes, 4 partial successes, and 4 misses or near misses. That’s pretty good considering that I basically forgot about my resolutions entirely for six months!
Photo Credit: Ed Donahue – licensed under Creative Commons.
Day One of my Winter Deep Clean went well, but Day Two was derailed when some friends came down to Portland to visit another mutual friend in the hospital. (Please pray for Ben Suprunowski.) But that’s okay—life happens. I’ll pick up where I left off after New Year’s Eve. Until then, I’m hibernating.
We went over to the hospital with our friends today and after a good visit we finally had to leave because our friends had a long drive home. But then we had to make a “quick trip” to Powell’s City of Books.
Naturally, that didn’t happen, but here are four things I love about adventures in Portland:
- Going on an epic quest for a book that only results in a delicious cup of Stumptown coffee.
- Playing “Who is the weirdest person at this intersection?” in downtown.
- Stumbling into PastaWorks for the first time with a friend who looks at the meat case and says, “It’s beautiful!”
- “I think we just made Portland weirder.” / “I don’t think you can make Portland weirder.”
It has been a looooong semester, folks. A lot of side projects and ambitions I had before the move fell to the wayside when we emerged from the mountain of boxes and I had to launch full speed ahead into my first semester after two years on a quarter system.
I finished my final final today, and boy does it feel good. Here are some thoughts I had reflecting back on this term.
- If another student says a class is hard, they are probably right.
- When you show up to your Linguistics final at 8am and the other students in the class look like zombies and one student is literally singing to himself, you know it has been a hard term.
- Thank God I can usually write well fast.
- I should enjoy my time spent living in an on-campus apartment because in later stages of life, I doubt so many friends will drop by constantly.
- The faculty and staff at WPC are obsessed with “unpacking” ideas.
- Sometimes college students act like velociraptors in the cafeteria.
- Good coffee is one of the biggest factors in your choice of college.
- Never take the Writing & Literature club to see a movie based on a book that they have all read.
- College students don’t need alcohol to act crazy. They have sleep deprivation to do that for them.
- Quarters are a precious commodity that will not be parted with save for clean laundry.
- Don’t open the fridge in the music lounge.
- It’s awesome to go to a school where you can have coffee with the college president.
- Make friends with the maintenance and security guys.
- Even if you have a migraine and guess on 75% of the answers on an exam, you might still get an A.
- When finals are over, you don’t know what to do with yourself.
- Winter break is only three weeks long and then I have to do it all again.
Textbook publishers are really good at one thing: making money. They frequently make minor changes in order to put out a new edition, and they love to confuse teachers, students, and bookstores alike by bundling online components, discs, workbooks, and solutions manuals with their textbooks.
Usually college bookstores work hard to lower the cost for their students, but the necessity of stocking a large quantity of the same edition of a book in decent condition and still make some profit means that they are rarely the cheapest option, even if you buy used.
Even though I love my college’s bookstore and have spent the past year working there, I haven’t bought my textbooks there since my first term as a freshman, with one exception. (There was one book I couldn’t get any cheaper and buying locally saved me shipping costs.) Instead, I’ve been buying online and routinely reducing the cost of my textbooks by 60% or more.
As an English major, I have to buy a lot of books. I needed twelve this term. It should have cost me $400-$500 (depending on used or new prices), but instead, I only paid $180. Could you use an extra $300 or so this term? Read on to find out how I did it. Continue reading How I Saved $300 on Textbooks…
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