New Year's Resolutions: Expectations vs. Reality

By Adam D. Sidman

Happy New Year, everyone! Chances are, you’ve been busy these past couple of days washing Wednesday night’s glitter out of your hair and more importantly, coming up with ways to “better yourself” with your New Year’s resolutions. To avoid the crushing disappointment you’ll experience when you inevitably break those highly unrealistic goals two weeks into the semester, we’ve compiled a list of your resolutions, along with the ways that they’re doomed to play out. Because at the end of the day, the best New Year’s resolution is to stop making New Year’s resolutions.

Working Out
Expectation: You tell yourself that this is going to be the year that you finally get into tip-top shape. You lay in your bed dreaming of your soon-to-be chiseled abs and toned arms, and the hot people you’re going to meet at the MAC and Hemenway during your daily trips to the treadmill.
Reality: You will go to the MAC once. It will be at 9 a.m. during shopping week. You will shortly realize that losing two hours of sleep is not worth running alongside old people that you have never seen before. You will soon revert back to telling yourself that your daily walk from the Yard to the Science Center is sufficient exercise.

Eating Healthy
Expectation: You picture a world full of whole grains, cold-pressed juices, and leafy greens. You promise to frequent the salad bar from now on, and to limit yourself to one bowl of Marshmallow Mateys per week.
Reality: You will abandon this goal as soon as the semester’s first Sunday Sundaes rolls around. People who say “nothing tastes as good as healthy feels” have clearly never tried chocolate ice cream coated in hot fudge and Oreo pieces.

Waking Up Earlier
Expectation: The early bird gets the worm, right? You figure that doing your laundry and getting extra work done at the crack of dawn are both good ideas. You promise to set your alarm t0 8 a.m. every day and experience the “whole new world” that your roommate is always talking about.
Reality: Why did you ever think that was a good idea? After two terrible days of slugging yourself to Annenberg for lukewarm scrambled eggs, you come to your senses and conclude that there is no reason to be up this early until your 9 a.m. final 15 weeks from now.

Being A Cleaner Roommate
Expectation: There was a little bit of tension last semester, but 2015 will be the year that you bury the hatchet for once and for all. You’ll greet your roommate after break and exclaim that they’ll never have to see your entire wardrobe on the bedroom floor ever again. You even arrive with new storage bins from The Container Store to shelve all of your useless crap.
Reality: You will actually try really hard with this one, and will more or less succeed until your first load of laundry. After that, your mess of clothes and papers and trash from Tasty Burger and Au Bon Pain will spiral into oblivion. You will feel bad, so you will surface clean once every few weeks to temporarily hide the fact that you’re a disgusting slob.