I did the most common student New Year’s resolutions, and I am tired of trying

On the first of January, I found myself in a predicament. The naïve ambition I had felt at midnight that 2020 was going to be ‘my year’ was being aggressively beaten down by my horrendous hangover. And I didn’t seem to care.

On the second of January, I found myself in a predicament. The hangover had worn off, but I was still wrapped up in seventeen blankets watching Netflix and eating unhealthy quantities of the left-over Christmas biscuits.

I had spent the last two weeks off uni doing basically this very thing every day, with the occasional Spoons trip sprinkled in. The adrenaline of knowing I had a huge pile of uni work to do seemed to spur me on to achieve nothing. After all, what’s better than procrastinating, than procrastinating with a raised and panicked heartbeat?

I remained in my cocoon for a few more hours scouring Google for help. I stumbled upon an article entitled ‘The Most Common New Year’s Resolutions for Students’ and I decided to try some, not just for my own benefit, but to save everyone reading this a little time too.

Stop procrastinating

This one was going to be foundational to my improvement as a human being. I decided to delete Netflix, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat from my life. I soon realised this served no purpose at all, because instead of mindlessly scrolling through social media, I found that annoying my family served as a substantial (and marginally comedic) form of entertainment.

Eventually, once I had found the courage to sit at my desk and tackle my giant to-do list, deleting these apps had helped a lot to improve both my productivity and my standard of work. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve redownloaded them now, but that half an hour without them taught me a lot.

Eat healthy

Usually I am quite good at this, but Christmas had completely annihilated my cooking routine, and days would pass where the only thing I would eat were different varieties of cheese. This delicious immediate pleasure may have felt beneficial for my mental well-being at the time, but I was definitely in need of some vitamins. Due to being fed the lie from literally every single lifestyle blogger that spreading avocado on some toast would solve all my problems* I gave it a try.

*Spoiler alert! It didn’t. But it does taste fab.

Be more organised

There were a few initial steps I could take to kick this one off. The one which seemed most logical was to order some of THOSE sexy pastel highlighters from Amazon. Because let’s be honest, if the girl with the pastel highlighters doesn’t know what she’s doing, then the rest of us are fucked. And I was ready to step up to the challenge of fulfilling her role. She may be the girl society doesn’t necessarily want, but she provides the structure and work ethic which we should all be forced to watch enviously.

I can now report that the ‘girl with the pastel highlighters’ is far more than merely a girl with pastel highlighters. In fact, she represents a personality far bigger than herself, something which I was not able to recreate. I may not have encompassed her organised personality or unwavering ambition, but at least my lecture notes are pretty now.

Spend less

I was surprised to discover that how much money I spend grows exponentially when I can actually be bothered to leave the house compared to when I can’t. I came to this astounding realisation over the Christmas break when I seemed to be saving my money pretty efficiently.

However, as soon as I was unable to eat all of my parent’s food, use their internet, heating, and electricity, my successful money-saving-expert phase dwindled to a painful stop, and I was forced to take off the navy blue suit and stop giving my friends my own shitty financial advice. Like, yeah Lidl is cheap and I love it, but sometimes the deals are too tempting, and I'll end up buying a wet-suit ‘cos it was only 20 quid.’ (disclaimer: ‘cos it was only 20 quid’ is (usually) NOT a reasonable excuse to buy a wet-suit!)

As the end of January rears its head, I can quite confidently say that none of these resolutions will stick with me for the rest of the year. But what better way to prepare for a brand new start than failure from the offset? At least now I have practice in what I should be doing to improve, I reckon I’ll just wait ‘til next year to do it properly.