2020 has been an awful year for a lot of people, myself included, and while I don’t expect the world to suddenly right itself at midnight January 1st EST, I do have hopes that things will improve in the new year.
Above everything else, this year has taught me that there are always going to be aspects of my life that remain out of my control. I can’t control the mass spread of a virus, nor whether the people in my life will take the precautionary measures to slow the spread of that virus seriously. I can’t control whether or not the people in my life that I love and care about will always be able to include me in theirs. And I can’t control the toilet paper stock at my local grocery store.
What I can control, however, are my own actions and my attitudes towards those of others. So, with this in mind, I have created a list of goals in my power as I attempt to make my 2021 the best fresh start I can imagine.
- Read More
I know…boring. I expect this to be on most people’s resolution list for the new year – and right it should be! (or ‘write’ it should be *ba dum tsss*). Books are fantastic wealths of information and fantastical escapes from the world, and there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that reading more can also improve brain connectivity, increase comprehension, lower blood pressure and reduce stress (healthline, 2019).
Though finding the time to read has been difficult for me in the past, this year I plan to valiantly fight the urge to turn to jelly I usually get when I try to think about reading for pleasure after flipping through pages upon pages of papers for class.
My (I think modest goal) is to read 26 books: one every two weeks. While I don’t have them all planned out, I do have a shortlist of titles I want to make the list:
- The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk
- Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen
- The Viral Storm by Nathan Wolfe
- The Great Influenza by John Berry
- A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
- Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
2. Graduate Undergrad
Okay, maybe this should’ve been number one on the list. It’s not a surprising resolution; I expect to be able to graduate in May 2021. I’ll be taking between 13 and 16 credits next semester, depending on my interest and availability in one elective, but I am genuinely motivated to absorb all I can from the other classes I plan to take.
I really can’t believe my four years of undergrad at Georgetown are almost over. I am so grateful for all the amazing people I’ve met and for all the fascinating classes I’ve taken (Shoutout to Shakespeare with Professor Michael Collins, Language and Society with Professor Grace Buker, and Global Health History with Professor Timothy Newfield).
With this last semester, yes, I still want to push myself to succeed and to do my best, but I also want to take the time to cherish the last semester I have with some of the people I really love on campus.
To quote Ferris Beuller: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
3. Better Myself
This is a kind of vague resolution because I mean a lot of things with it. This last month, I’ve taken a lot of time to focus on myself and access my goals, something I also find inherent in my approach to the end of my undergraduate studies. It’s the end of an era: a time to adjust my priorities and redefine my lifestyle as I enter the “real world”. This is the time for me to put myself first and take actionable steps towards realizing the future I want.
I want to establish myself as a rising professional – get a job and make real-world contributions to the health and safety of those around me. I want to continue to learn outside of university – find things that interest me, areas to expand and learn about, creative paths to pursue. I want to become a healthier person, prioritizing my physical and mental health to ensure that I am able to give my all to others when needed. This also means recognizing when I am exhausted or draining myself, and ensuring that I inject some element of fun into everything I do (Cue Mary Poppins: “In every job that must be done…”). I want to make sure that I enjoy my life, while finding success and I think the trick to happiness and any endeavor is to find the appropriate balance between the two.
In addition to these kind of capitalist “do better to work better” goals, which I unfortunately feel the need to ascribe to as a member of American society, I also want to find out what being a better person on an emotional sense means to me. I think that I’ve gotten better at standing up for myself and my needs and boundaries in recent years, but I plan to continue that journey, examining what healthy friendships and relationships mean to me and what I, as an individual, am seeking from those connections and how I can be a better friend and relative to those around me. I’m not really sure what those answers are, but I look forward to deep, emotional conversations with the people who are important in my life to help me in pursuit of that goal.