The life and times of a normal university student

01 January 2014

Happy Freaking New Year - Ninety Second Post

I don't have any new years resolutions. At least, I didn't when I started this post. A new year is just a new day, after all, and I don't have the money to initiate any radical lifestyle changes just yet. I'd like to eat healthier and exercise, but winter isn't the best time to start trying to motivate yourself to do something unpleasant, like exercise in the cold, and my paycheck comes in a few weeks, so no fancy expensive health food for me until then. So, no big resolutions are really possible for me at this point.
I don't really get the whole hubbub around the new year. Yeah, it's a new year, but I'm not that old and I've already experienced 23 first days of new years. Now those years are old and gone. in a few years, I probably won't be able to recall anything more about 2014 than I can about 1994 (that is, a few snippets that blur together). There's a statistic floating around the internet that says that 8% of New Year's Resolutions are actually kept, so according to that, I won't be able to keep a resolution worth beans. Why bother with all the pomp and circumstance? I'll just bide my time and enact small but important lifestyle changes when I can gather up the motivation and funding necessary.
2014 is going to look different from 2013, mostly because I have the full time job that is grad school. No graduation in the spring this year, and no moving from state to state and panicking over the lack of housing. I'll still be scrambling to pay school fees and wishing I had more time to do outdoorsy stuff, but it'll be with the promise of a regular, salary-dependent paycheck coming soon.
No  more Whitworth, except via the mail they send me in hopes that I'll cough up more money (and heaven help the poor kid doing phonathon who has to call me).
Some similarities are to be expected. I'll be teaching labs again and enjoying that warm feeling inside when a student gets excited about science. The difference is that now I know that I like teaching, whereas I started 2013 not knowing.
I suppose I do have resolutions, of a kind, for the year. I want to save up and buy a new computer, since this one is slowly and steadily breaking down (the DVD drive went out, and the CPU is always running at 90% or higher). I also want to save up for a car, but that will have to wait for the computer. I can live without a car, obviously, but this computer is going to kick the bucket sooner or later and I can't afford to live without a computer. Being in charge of other people's grades is a huge hassle when you think your computer might die.
Just for the heck of it, I'll resolve to try indoor rock climbing this year. This way, when someone asks what my resolutions are, I can give them that one. Plus, I started off 2014 by eating chocolate while writing blog posts at 2 AM. I don't think any "healthy living" resolutions would have lasted past that little set-back.

Anyway, happy New Year if you're into that sort of thing!