New Year, New Me: To Make a Resolution or Not?

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“New year, new me.” As we enter the beginning of 2019, it marks the time for a change and New Year’s resolutions. While many make resolutions, very few stick to them within the first month, even less accomplishing them at the end of the year. Statistics show that 25% of people will stay with their newly made resolutions throughout January, while only 8% said they completed their goal overall. The first few days after New Years, student journalists interviewed their peers to investigate what these statistics would look like in Avonworth High School.

Each year over one million spectators watch the ball drop in Times Square each New Year, but over a billion people will watch it from home.

These results are what one would predict and were very similar to that of the survey. Most students did not make any type of resolution. Around 17% of the people interviewed had made a resolution. When asked why they did not make a resolution, the answers were mixed. Most students agreed that making a resolution was a waste of time and that they were too busy while others had different responses.

The day that students returned from break students in Jounalism went to the halls in search of people who had made resolutions. In the class of twenty-one, only four students in the Journalism Class had a resolution. After a class period of gathering information and interviews, additional opinions were found, making a total of seventy-six collected.

11th-grade student, Fabian Vazquez Ramos, went on to say “It helps for the first few days, but it’s obviously not going to work for the entire year unless you are really dedicated.¨ He further explained that he thought people were going to get bored or tired of the same routine they were going to do the whole year, which seemed to be the consensus among other students.

A majority of New Year’s resolutions are related to Health and Fitness, as shown in the graph above. It was found in Australia that over half of people to make a resolutions plan to become healthier over the New Year.

Super Smash is a crossover game released in 2018 from Nintendo.

On the other hand, some students did, in fact, make resolutions. Freshman Killian Horigan’s resolution was to place in a Super Smash Bros tournament. Killian was asked why his resolution was different than others. He said that it was a hobby of his. Killian added, “it’s just something that is easily worked at.” He viewed his resolution as more of a goal. However, his opinions on resolutions, similar to Fabian’s, were bleak. He believed that most resolutions were something along the lines of becoming healthier or “to get fit,” but that many shortly thereafter forgot about them.

Whether a resolution had been made or not, the majority opinion was that most people do not follow through with them for the whole year. Freshman Maria Babusci remarked that resolutions were “good, but unrealistic.” It was found that many do not believe that these types of resolutions are very serious, but it would depend on the person. Overall, this would be a generalization of the public opinion that was heard during the interviews.