“New year, new me,” has been plastered all over the Facebook accounts of my friends in the last few days. The concept is self-betterment, which I am all for. Everyone has been asking me-- what are my resolutions for the new year? How am I going to better myself this year? Am I going to exercise more, or get straight A’s? I’ve turned the idea over and over in my head, and I’m not sold on the idea of New Year’s resolutions.

What does New Year’s Day 2017 mean? Despite us being in the year 2017, there have been more new year celebrations than that. The first modern take on New Year’s Day was celebrated in the year 45 B.C. on January 1st, the day the Julian calendar came into effect. Since then, it has been celebrated annually, to mark the Earth’s full rotation around the sun. Even before the Julian calendar, societies celebrated the turning of their own calendar years. To most people, the new year means hope, new beginnings, and change. This includes making resolutions to change some aspect of their life, in an attempt to make the new year better than the previous one. New year’s resolutions date back to even before modern day New Year’s. Babylonians made promises to the Gods to return borrowed items and pay back their debts, in order to gain favor with the Gods. Romans made their resolutions to the god Janus, the two-faced god of beginnings, endings, and transitions.

A typical New Year’s resolution, with exercise as an example, goes something like this: a person makes a vow to start exercising more. The person then purchases a gym membership and attends one time. After this initial burst of energy, they will continue to plan times to go to the gym, but things will keep getting in the way. They never use the gym membership more than once. The year passes, they make new resolutions, rinse and repeat. People get so excited to make their resolutions that they don’t pay any mind to how achievable their goal actually is. They say they will do things that, in reality, they don’t have the time or the willpower for. New Year’s gives the vast majority of people a large burst of motivation that will be over as quickly as it comes. This is sadly the same thing that happens a large portion of the time during the rest of the year whenever people decide they’re going to change-- they are initially excited, but then realize their goals were unrealistic. This is the reason I am not making resolutions this year. In the past I have decided I was going to stop biting my nails, start exercising, eat healthy, stop biting my nails, get better grades, be more outgoing, stop biting my nails, finish more projects that I start, and-- stop biting my nails.

You see a common theme here. Biting my nails is something I have done my whole life, and tried countless times to stop. The most unsuccessful times were those spurred on by the new year. This is because these times weren’t even inspired by any real wish to stop-- I just felt like I was required to change something because it was a new year. When I started college this fall, I decided for a project in health class that I would stop biting my nails. Now, I am typing this with some difficulty because I have succeeded, and my nails are currently long. The reason I was able to achieve this goal is because it was inspired by school, something that matters to me more than anything else. Unless the turning of the year has this sort of emotional significance for everyone, making resolutions for it doesn’t seem like it will work for most.

I am all for self-betterment. Change is good, and even if you don’t reach your goals, it’s wonderful to make as many of them as you wish to until one sticks. However, when I decide I’m going to change, I know it won’t succeed if I make the decision based on something as trivial as having to write a new date on my papers. When the new semester starts in two weeks, I will be attempting to exercise more. This is not because of the new year, or even the new semester-- this is because I will have access to the school’s recreation center and it’s more realistic a goal for me when I don’t have to run outside when it’s cold. I am going to be striving for better grades, but this is again not due to the changing year. This is due to the fact that I look back at my grades from last semester and feel disappointed in myself. I am not making resolutions this New Year because I understand that I need to be realistic when I decide to make changes in my life. To those of you who are making resolutions, I sincerely wish you good luck, and I look forward to seeing how everyone manages to grow and change over the next year, myself included. Even if you don’t succeed in your initial resolutions, keep going, because 2017 will change you in ways that you could never expect. I know we’re in for a hell of a year. Keep on keeping on.