A Procrastinator’s New Year’s Resolutions
Procrastination is an art form, a skill I’ve been honing diligently over my 3.5 years in college (to my mother’s dismay). A blog I meant to write a month ago about my New Year’s resolutions is just now taking shape, a testament to why exactly I need to set resolutions and goals in the first place. This semester, with my lack of internship or strenuous course load, was supposed to be one with ample free time for me to loll about and shake my fist at commencement looming in the distance. Instead, I’ve filled all blocks of time with club meetings and extra commitments. Sigh. I’ll never learn.
Upon the realization today that Lent is just around the corner, I figured that now would be the perfect time to pull out the half-written New Year’s resolutions I started back in January. Lent is usually a time when I give up a bad habit or tack on a good habit to my routine to dig deeper into my faith, and many of my resolutions deal with kicking bad habits or challenging myself to step outside of my comfort zone. Half of them are silly, but as a silly person I feel like that’s fair. There’s no better time than right now to make this semester the most productive, most fun semester to date. So, without further ado, here are my resolutions:
1. Limit Netflix-watching to one day per week. I have not been adhering to this rule very strictly so far, evidenced by the alarming speed at which I have blown through episodes seasons of Gilmore Girls. However, I do think I would gain something if I didn’t feel the constant need to watch the latest Modern Family/SNL/New Girl/Parks and Recreation/The Mindy Project episode. Lately, some of my less urgent homework assignments have been made to compete against quality television for my attention and devotion. Perhaps the quality of my homework would increase if “Netflixing” was allocated to one binge-watching weekend day. I’ll let you know how that goes.
2. Blog every two weeks. With so many exciting events happening at Vanderbilt during my senior year, the content for a blog is always there. Sometimes my will to write just isn’t. I know I’ll look back on this semester and wish I had blogged more, because I don’t trust my memory to document senior year adequately.
3. Respond to emails within 12 hours. There’s nothing I dislike more than a group project member failing to email me back about pressing matters in a timely manner. When that happens, I resort to sending passive aggressive emails with increasing numbers of exclamation marks, and nobody wants that. This is why I am resolving to “not be that guy” in 2015, responding to emails (or at least making a note to respond ASAP) as soon as I read them.
4. Schedule one or more intentional lunches* per week. Last semester, my schedule had me busy straight through lunch, Monday through Friday. This made it hard to catch up with friends and acquaintances on a regular basis, as grabbing a meal is an easy way to stay close with people in college. Because my schedule this semester is much more flexible, I will try to have lunch with old ASB friends, BCM friends, friends from high school, and others at least once a week.
*Sometimes I get bored with the idea of getting lunch with people all of the time, so I suggest alternate activities like getting coffee, crocheting, or going to Noshville to eat black and white cookies together.
5. Do laundry at least every other week. Self-explanatory.
6. Stop eating all of the free junk food on campus. My roommate and I constantly joke that the “freshman fifteen” isn’t where weight gain stops in college. Don’t forget about the “sophomore sixty” and “junior jillion” (our own terms). We realized that we were eating every free food item offered to us on campus, and usually these foods are not the healthiest (Jet’s pizza, Chick-Fil-A sandwiches, and Jeni’s Ice Cream). With a little help from Weight Watchers, we are attempting to reverse this effect this semester.
7. Become proficient in Photoshop. I plan on taking a class or two through Skillshare so that I can perform basic edits in Photoshop. I believe a bit of design knowledge will help me out later in the advertising industry.
8. Learn all of the words to Uptown Funk. (Because I need at least one doable goal on this list.)
9. Back up my computer once a month. My laptop bit the dust during my first week of the semester, and I had a mild panic attack when I realized that my data had not been backed up in months. I aim to avoid losing all of my precious documents in 2015.
10. Call mom and dad every couple of days on the way to class. A typical walk to class takes 10-15 minutes, and I’ve found that this amount of time is the perfect length to catch up with mom and dad over the phone. It leaves just enough time for each party to give the highlights of their day and ask a few questions without being grilled on any one topic.
Well there you have it, the master plan. Here’s to hoping I can follow through.