You sit down in your favorite sweater with a cup of hot chocolate, a pencil, and a page entitled
“New Year’s Resolutions.” You think about all the fun you’ll have and how you’re going to get a gym
membership and look like one of those people on the protein shake commercials with an addition of a
4.0 GPA. Your plans, goals, and dreams for the year are all resting on those little blue lines across the
page, and you sit back and think that it looks like an epic roadmap to success.
As you get further away from your sleep deprived dreams of New Year’s night, and closer to the
world of caffeine superpowers and homework you realize you now actually have to make what’s on the
page here in reality. This is the part where the snooze button gets hit at least eight times- twelve if it’s a
Monday. We always find ourselves reaching for the stars and thinking of yet another foolproof plan for
no stress and a perfect balance of friends and work. However, I am 100% sure most of us do not take
into account that life happens.
Statistic Brain said, “8% of people are successful in achieving their resolution.” You might be one
of those lucky people who manage a 4.0 and still have time to work out. Then maybe you’re so
awesome that you have an epic bromance or girl’s night, but the rest of us are not so fortunate.
I make what I think is a realistic plan and try as hard as I can, but as they say, the first plan never
works. So I spend the year scrambling for honor roll and spending any free time working on my skills in
the nap department. So tell me, what happens if you are sick and the teacher accepts no late work but
you couldn’t find time to get everything done early? It dawns on you that the gym membership costs
more than that quarter in your pocket.
So many write down everything they want on paper, but I do not see why we are so specific
when half the time we don’t ever get to do most of what we wrote. It seems that you only get a reality
check when you have the biggest plans. In other words, it seems that when you want something really
bad, a lot of curveballs get thrown on your path to the end goal.  Life will never work out exactly the way
you want it to.
I know I didn’t write about all the homework and early wake up calls that I got. I wrote what I
think many people did. I wanted to keep a journal and spend more time with family, and maybe even
find some more quality time just for me. However, all I got was high hopes and more worries.
We all were raised to know that making resolutions is one of the huge traditions of the New
Year that goes along with staying up until midnight, and having that big celebration with your family
when the clock chimes. However, I am starting to feel that the resolutions have lost their touch. Life will
never be that predictable, and we are always told that we can reach our dreams if we set our minds to
it. Why write it down at all? Everyday the paper will remind you of those goals, and sometime you will
just throw it away to make room for the picture frames full of all the memories of things you
accomplished without resolutions in the first place.
I wish everyone could write down his or her resolutions and then have that moment like Rocky
Balboa when he said, “Yo, Adrian! I did it!” However, most of us just don’t get that moment, and I don’t
think most of us ever will when it comes down to something we wrote on a piece of paper a year ago.
Growing up, I always heard the adults say that there aren’t enough hours in the day. I think I am starting
to understand what they meant.