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October 10th, 2005

Each holiday season, Americans start reminiscing about the year’s challenges and accomplishments, and thinking about new goals for the upcoming year. For students, especially college students, the start of the new academic year is another good time to make resolutions. Being better organized, trying out a new club or extracurricular activity, speaking up more in class, and working on networking skills are all good goals for college students, but it’s important to do a little reminiscing before solidifying your list.

Think about the year before, and which memories or habits make you feel frustrated or like you came up short. Maybe you feel like you wasted too much time sleeping in or feeling anxious, which kept you from performing to your full potential in a certain class. Or maybe you always felt rushed, like you never had enough time to get things done. Once you pinpoint the areas in which you’d like to do better, you can figure out which resolutions are really going to turn your life around, and not just sound good when you spout them off to your parents.

Don’t go overboard with resolutions: pick one or two overarching themes, like time management and preparing for the professional world, and then you can scribble down a few specific action items that you can work towards during the year. For time management, you might need to wake up 10 minutes earlier and be better about bringing study materials with you so that you can do homework whenever you have downtime between classes. For professional-oriented goals, you can commit to attending one networking event each month and going to the career center to look up jobs and speak with a counselor. Keeping your action items flexible but specific will make it easier for you to cross them off your list, and actually achieve them. To stay on track so that you don’t abandon your New School Year’s Resolutions, check in with your list once a month. Evaluate your efforts and performance at the end of the semester, and if you’ve taken significant steps to achieve your goals, set new ones for the following semester, when the rest of the world will be catching up to you after the holidays.

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