New Year’s Resolutions: Impact on the LHS Community
New Year’s resolutions are a common western tradition that involves an individual changing their lifestyle to focus on good practices in contrast to dangerous ones or change how they live as a whole. The name of theseis traditions are New Year’s resolutions because a resolution is a firm intention to do or not to do something, and these resolutions are specifically made at the start of a new year. These resolutions are implemented into various individuals’ lives with the idea that the lives of these select people will be improved through this tradition.
To many people, the start of a new year is significant as it signifies the period of time where New Year’s resolutions are made. These people make goals that change certain practices and these resolutions are followed until the lifestyle of these people are actually altered. To others, New Year’s resolutions are just silly “goals” that are made at the beginning of the year, but are later broken due to different reasons such as lack of motivation.
Students are typically prone to making New Year’s resolutions as their lifestyle revolves around school and the workload that they are forced to meet. Whether or not these students keep or eventually break these resolutions, students typically make various goals or set achievements that they strive to meet at the beginning of the year. These resolutions could include receiving a higher set of grades, being able to sleep more, or even to start preparing for the future by finding a job.
Especially with the year 2020 that was difficult to all people (students included) it may not be a surprise to see more students participating in this tradition and making resolutions in order to better themselves. As a symbolic way of representing the idea that 2020 will be left behind, many students may have chosen to make resolutions in order to develop a “new version” of themselves.
To investigate the impacts that these New Year’s resolutions applied to the Leonia High School community as a whole, two different freshmen were interviewed to discuss how their lifestyles have been affected by New Year’s resolutions.
When asked what his New Year’s resolution was, a freshman from LHS named Joshua Jang answered by replying with, “This year, I only had a small New Year’s Resolution which was to raise my grades to all As for the third marking period.” This response is an example of the typical mindset of a student, as higher grades is something that every student aspires to reach. When asked with what he has exactly been doing to reach this goal, he responded by saying, “So far, all I have done is do my homework earlier so that I could use fresh information in my head to do my assignments.” When asked with the question of if he prefers his lifestyle prior to making his resolutions he simply responded with, “Not really. I am only putting a little bit more effort in.” Clearly, Jang is a prime example of a simple New Year’s resolution being implemented into a student’s life.
On the contrary, when another LHS freshman named Ryan Son was asked with what his resolutions were regarding this New Year, he proclaimed, “I really did not have a New Year’s Resolution. It is partly because I am just lazy and changing my lifestyle may be too tiring.” In comparison to the previous student that was interviewed, Son was apparently unwilling to change his lifestyle with the start of the new year as he believed it was too much work. When asked if ever made these resolutions in previous years, he responded by saying, “I have, but as the years passed I stopped because I was truly just too lazy.” This exemplifies a common mindset that students in general could have. As balancing a social life and schoolwork is something that all students struggle with (especially freshmen), it may be difficult for some students such as Son to create New Year’s resolutions that they feel obligated to follow.
As it has only been two months since the new year has begun, it is difficult to tell how much these resolutions have exactly impacted the lives of various students (or not). Since every student and individual in society as a whole is wired differently, it is interesting to compare and contrast two different students coming from the same school system and grade level to see how they are impacted by New Year’s resolutions. All in all, whether students from LHS or any individual in general made New Year’s resolutions or not, hopefully they will be able to improve their lives by cancelling out old and parasitic habits of the past by practicing new patterns instead.
