Third-year student Luke Ziolkowski was playing video games one day over winter break when a thought occurred to him.
Ziolkowski, an English and creative writing major, had been keeping a journal for almost a year and a half but had become inconsistent in the habit of using it. Writing itself wasn’t the issue — it was getting into the mindset of writing that presented a challenge.
Upon making this discovery, and realizing he hadn’t written anything over break, he decided something needed to be done.
With the new year on the horizon, Ziolkowski said it was a good time to try and make a change. He doesn’t normally indulge in yearly resolutions — he lamented that he often hears people joke about seeing the gym more crowded in January — but this year, he decided to give it a shot.
“Obviously, you can do that kind of stuff whenever. That’s kind of why I don’t normally do resolutions. It’s just that I have the mindset of, ‘If I want to change something, why not just do it before New Year’s?’” he said.
Ultimately, Ziolkowski believes if adding the label of “New Year’s resolution” encourages more people to aspire for change, then there’s no harm.
“As long as it works,” he said.
Dylan Popish, a third-year UI student studying screenwriting, found himself in a similar situation.
During a recent visit with his therapist, he developed a particular system that he realized could be worked into a New Year’s resolution. He developed a list of healthy activities that fall to the wayside all too often including exercising, eating well, reading more books, and cleaning his apartment.
From there, he decided to keep a log to see how many days he ended up doing the things he wanted to do.
This way, he said, he could keep his resolution for as long as possible rather than have it fizzle out in the middle of January like resolutions so often do.
The main idea, he said, was to continue pursuing these healthy activities for as long as possible. Even if he broke the streak and missed a day or two, he would be committed to picking them back up.
Popish’s goals in many ways align with the majority of people who make resolutions. According to Drive Research, adults aged 18-24 are more likely to base their ambitions around fitness and well-being with 53 percent of this group planning to exercise more and 51 percent to eat healthier.
College students are more likely than most people to make a New Year’s resolution centered around health and wellness, as experienced by Popish and Ziolkowski.
“I didn’t want to just do one thing. My goal was to just be healthier in general,” Popish said. “I have the passive goal of doing these healthy things as much as I can.”