The start of something, be it the calendar year or the semester, usually makes us want to change our lives. Entire industries are built on this. We buy gym memberships and new planners, classic novels and stationery all in the hopes that we’ll transform into someone we’re not — someone better. This new person sticks around for a week, or maybe two, and then we’re back to who we were.
This is a familiar cycle to lots of us, me included. So, a few years ago, I decided to ignore the pressure to set resolutions during the new year, in favor of setting goals whenever I, personally, felt drawn to change. For me, this is often around the time of my birthday, or at the start of a new semester.
The types of goals that I set usually vary with the occasion. For example, on my birthday, I like to spend some time looking back at the past year, some time feeling proud that, whatever I had or had not achieved, I had at least made it another year around the sun. It’s a personal time for gratitude, both for myself and for those who had helped make the year whatever it was.
For the past four years, I’ve also set academic and career goals at the beginning of each semester at Hopkins. I reset my Notion, craft a new “Master Assignment To-Do List,” and add in classes and meetings into my Google Calendar. Then, I think about what I want to achieve this semester, how I want to feel in academia, and, perhaps more importantly, how I don’t want to feel. Finally, I set SMART goals, giving myself the best possible chance for sustainable change.
Having said all of this, I did none of that this semester.
I wanted to want to, but I just didn’t. We are now a few weeks into Spring 2025, and without my goals and resolutions, I feel like I’m somewhat drifting through the semester, letting things happen to me, instead of making things happen for me.
A part of me is resentful that I don’t have my shit together; that I’ve spent years shaping myself into someone who can’t function when she doesn’t have her shit together. And then that makes me think about why I don’t have my shit together, now, this semester.
This semester is different because it’s my last one — whether that’s “last one ever,” or just “last one as an undergraduate,” I don’t know. But, for now, it’s my last one. There are so many options for what comes next, probably more options than I’ve ever had in my life, and I’m going into it with fear and nervousness but, above all, what feels like excitement.
A large part of me is ready to move on. I feel the same way as I did during my last year of high school — grateful for this place that taught me so much but ready to see what else is out there, how else I can grow.
Another part of me feels cheated. I feel like I just figured out how to do this, how to “hack” the college experience, how to live with roommates who are also my best friends, and it’s all being taken away from me. This part of me doesn’t want any more change.
When change is being forced upon me from every direction, I’m happy to resist change in the ways that I can control. I can be excited for the forward motion of the months to come, but I can also want to stay in the here and the now for as long as I can.
I started the new year somewhat upset that I wasn’t feeling the internal push for change as everyone else seemed to. But, I disregarded this pressure, as I had told myself I would, and waited to feel it at the start of the semester. The start of the semester came and went, and I only grew more resistant to change.
It’s taken me a few weeks, but I’ve finally come back to what I’d forgotten: I never promised myself that I would set goals at the beginning of the semester; I promised myself that I would set goals “whenever I, personally, felt drawn to change” — whenever that may be.
I don’t know when I’ll next feel excited at the prospect of encouraging change. Maybe my birthday. But I have learned that, for me, avowing to set goals at the start of the semester is exactly as useless as avowing to set resolutions at the start of the New Year. I switched one arbitrary deadline for another and got up on my high horse that I wasn’t like everyone else.
So, the next time that I set a goal or a resolution, it might be my birthday, or the start of a new job, or it might genuinely be the New Year. Whenever it is, it’ll be when I want to.
Yana Mulani is a senior from Dubai, U.A.E. majoring in Economics, English and International Studies. Her column discusses how her past intertwines with her present as she navigates a period of growth and discovery. She is a Magazine Editor and a previous Editor-in-Chief for The News-Letter.
