Eight New Year’s resolutions every Bristol University student should make in 2024

As the New Year rolls around again, it is the perfect time to be setting goals for the next 12 months, that you will definitely be sticking to. The classic “I will go to the gym everyday”, or “I will start my assignments at the beginning of term” are unrealistic and overdone, so here are eight alternative resolutions that will allow you to be the best version of you in 2024.

1. Stop buying pastries every day

This one may seem easy, but when getting a coffee in the morning, especially when rewarding yourself for making your morning lectures, those pastries will be calling your name. However, doing this most days becomes an expensive habit, even if the Source Cafe coffee-pastry deal makes it seem like an economically sound decision. Save the money and the occasional croissant will feel like a true luxury.

2. Do a weekly food shop

It’s 5pm on a Thursday and you’ve had a busy day of lectures and procrastinating in the library when it dawns on you, that you have zero food at home and will need to hit Sainsbury’s, which is quite literally the worst place on earth to be at this time. There’s a mystical solution to this: the weekly food shop. The idea of cutting into your budget early in the week is soul-crushing, but you will smugly be able to walk home with your fridge full of food and avoid the temptation of yet another sweet treat.

3. Perfect your post-club routine

Rather than banning yourself from going out and having fun with your friends, instead, devise the perfect post-club routine to try and prevent spending the next day rotting away. Down that water, butter that toast and scrub your face like it’s a military mission to optimise sleep time, and congratulate yourself for not ending up with a 2/10 in your bed.

4. Make time to visit your friends or invite them to visit you

Time in Bristol seems to go by in a flash, and it often feels like any free weekends will need to be spent in the library. However, when planned in advance, a weekend spent with friends rather than assignments will never be the end of the world. By actually keeping to the “come visit me at uni!” you can visit another city (although it will most likely be worse than Bristol), which provides the opportunity to be feral without recognising half the people in the club.

5. Actually turn up to lectures and seminars

We all start every term with this promise, but it’s easier said than done (even humanities students with literally just nine contact hours a week). It’s all too easy to convince yourself you’re being productive by skipping lectures as it gives you more time to work on assignments, but fast-forward to the exam period and you realise how many hours of lectures you have to watch, which is a painstakingly boring task. Turning up to lectures is a simple way to convince yourself you are making use of your tuition fee and that this degree is worth it, so maybe this is the term where these promises are kept.

6. Go out more

This may not be the conventional resolution, and this doesn’t mean you should vow to make every Fishies Wednesday, but make an effort to go to the places you always say you want to go to. The terms are intense and night-ins are very appealing but you’re only at uni once! By all means, stay in now and then, but remember that for the rest of your life, getting blackout drunk on a Monday night will most likely not be normal.

7. Try not to have an existential crisis and run home

This one may be a bit niche, but I’m sure I’m not alone with the bi-annual (or sometimes more like bi-weekly) mental breakdowns that occur where everyone seems to have their life together but you. I think we all need to chill out for 2024 – go out, go on dates, and be a silly fresher even if you’re well into your twenties, nothing is that deep! Although running home from your problems is 100% a valid way to cope with uni life.

8. Don’t spend your whole loan in January

2024 is the year for budgeting. Don’t restrict yourself from buying things that keep you sane, like your daily sweet treat, but embrace your inner finance bro and set aside money for this, and work out how much you can spend each week to prevent living off beans and your flatmate’s bread for the last week of term.

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• Is La Rocca really worth that queue? 10 unpopular opinions about Bristol University
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• ‘It can’t be that expensive, can it?’ Expectations vs reality of Bristol University