New Year’s resolutions are infamous for being difficult to keep up with throughout the year. At Townsend Harris, teachers and students reflected on their progress in fulfilling their resolutions thus far.
Freshman Maz Kurant made a large list of goals that he wishes to accomplish in 2016 which include “Being a better person, writing more, volunteering at at least 1 Bernie Sanders event each week, reading more, working on my speaking skills (stop saying ‘um’ or ‘ugh’), becoming better at the guitar, and getting more sleep.” Max’s essential strategy that he uses to achieve his goals is to “just get into the habit of doing them, so it’s not like a chore or anything. Making it part of my routine, basically.”
Other students have made goals that aren’t as specific, but come into play during their everyday lives. Senior Peony Tse wants to adopt a healthier and more positive mindset, reasoning, “Sometimes I would think that the world is out to get me when bad things happen, or frustrating things happen, like missing the train by a few seconds or when nothing in a day goes right, but I’ve realized that by thinking those things, I’m creating an unhealthy and negative energy in myself. I started thinking about karma and how good energy will come to me if I send good energy out.”
Using a similar approach to Max, Peony shares, “I’ve really been keeping up with the goal every single day, and the past few weeks have just been great.”
Like Peony, Spanish teacher Christian Castillo’s resolution was health related. He started to implement dietary changes he hopes to maintain for life. Lucky for him, this change came with no struggle at all as he said, “I completely stopping eating meat, milk, and cheese. I just gave it up. No it wasn’t difficult, it was actually pretty easy. I just replaced it with fish!”
For freshman Safiyah Khan, her goal was to keeping the balances between her school work and her after-school activities, specifically being a player on the basketball team. She stated that “trying to be more athletic has helped me relieve stress especially when I workout. A struggle for me would be trying to keep up [with balancing my goals], but once I found the balance I was good,”
But for others, New Year’s Resolutions have remained empty promises. English teacher Jessica Stillman has not been as successful as she had hoped. Ms. Stillman’s goal was to get her 7 month old to sleep through the night in his crib. She states, “It’s a lot easier to just put the baby in bed with me, because he falls asleep faster. So, I usually just end up doing that.”
While senior Nadia Khan hasn’t completed her resolutions yet, she believes “there’s still time for that.”
