How to break your New Year’s resolutions in true Edinburgh fashion

When January 1^st comes around in some bizarre, non-religious but horrendously moralistic routine, we have this odd compulsion to make New Year’s resolutions.

Our lives are hopeless, ambitionless, and lacking direction, but somehow getting smashed beyond belief while watching Jools Holland clicks our moral guide into motion.

”Yeah, fireworks were pretty good, pretty sure I was passed out though.”

I give it a few weeks.

Joining the Gym

It’s the start of semester two, and suddenly the second helping of Christmas pudding doesn’t seem like such a great idea.

We stride with ambition towards the beautiful CSE, with its supposed “500 grand refurbishment”, slap down our newly student-loan-endowed card, only to discover two weeks later that the only exercise we need is clicking “next episode” on Netflix.

Self-professed gym monkey Alex Ash said: ”I don’t use the gym anymore these days. They don’t have enough iron there for me to bench.”

BEST WAY TO BREAK IT: Watch the entire five seasons of Breaking Bad while doing a plank in your sitting room.

Cutting down on booze

One VK-swilling fresher was overheard slurring at Big Cheese on Saturday: ”You don’t need to drink to have fun. It’s a commonly held myth.”

You majestically reject that second glass of red wine over dinner. You bat down suggestions of a round system, insisting you’ll ‘’just have the one’’. Your liver and you are best pals.

But it just so happens that everything at university revolves, in truly British fashion, around a piss-up, and whether its your birthday, your friend’s birthday, or your lecturer’s grandmother’s house warming party, you’re going to wake up with a pocket full of incriminating Snapchats and a night’s worth of regret.

BEST WAY TO BREAK IT: Five quid bottle of knock-off champagne at Why Not.

Finding a Partner

We all know Edinburgh in winter is colder than a Calippo on the north face of Everest, so the thought of having a loved one to curl up with at night is never a bad one.

A mournful yet optimistic second year medic was overheard saying: “There are 30,000 students in Edinburgh, surely my soulmate is one of them.”

Hate to break it to you, but if you believe in soulmates, you probably also drink chamomile tea, do capoeira, and recently found yourself somewhere just south of Machu Picchu.

BEST WAY TO BREAK IT: All night Tinder-fest, featuring your iPhone, a bottle of Buckfast, and the complete Taylor Swift collection.

Applying yourself academically

Turns out, contrary to what almost all of us went through at school on a daily basis, waking up before midday, reading books, and submitting essays, is a near unthinkable task at University.

So do us all a favour, and do what Edinburgh students do best: complain about the weather, drinking vat-loads of tea, and get royally slaughtered on the night before your 9 a.m.

BEST WAY TO BREAK IT: Stand outside the library with the smoking crew, holding a copy of Voltaire’s Candide, tutting at anyone leaving the building.