Bringing in 2023 with New Year’s Resolutions

Wabrek sets resolutions “about NOT doing something.” He says “One year, I made it a whole year without eating fast food.” For 2023, Mr. Wabrek’s resolution is to “not drink any soda.”

With the start of the New Year, resolutions present an opportunity to improve yourself and your habits. Although this sounds like a great idea, only about 16% of people who set resolutions actually follow through with them. The majority end up giving up within the first six weeks of the year. Upper School English chairperson and English teacher Bailey Player says “I generally don’t set New Year’s resolutions. I have in the past, but they never really stick so I just gave up on doing it.” Mr. Player as well as many other people believe that resolutions are unnecessarily stressful.

A common issue with resolutions is not having a realistic, detailed plan to follow through on. The acronym SMART is productive for helping set up resolutions. It stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Head of Upper School Michael Gannon says “I think they are helpful as long as the resolutions are aspirational targets rather than hard and fast rules.” As Mr. Gannon states, it is easier to follow through on goals when you make goals for yourself that are attainable and not impossible to accomplish.

This year, Mr. Gannon’s resolutions are to “get more exercise” and to “eat healthy.” He shares the same resolutions as Head of School Fred Assaf. Mr. Gannon says “Eating healthy does not mean never eating unhealthy foods, just aiming for better. Exercising more is pretty attainable when your baseline is as low as mine!” Mr. Gannon plans to accomplish these goals by putting “positive energy behind the resolution, not negative.” It is great to start a new year with positive energy and it can make it easier to accomplish your goals.

Along with his earlier mentioned goals, Mr. Assaf states that another one of his goals for 2023 is “crushing Lovett and Westminster.” I bet this goal is one that is pretty common around the Pace community.

Mr. Assaf shows his support for resolutions by saying, “I love the motivation - and you can begin change at the very moment you feel the courage to strive for excellence!!”

Biology teacher and Class of 2026 Dean Ben Ewing says that “rather than resolutions,” he creates “a list of goals and priorities for the upcoming year.” This consists of “spending every day this year learning and practicing Spanish so that I can travel more to Spanish-speaking nations” and “getting my vegetable garden up and running.” Mr. Ewing states “I think that any opportunity to reflect on how you are living and to make intentional decisions about what you want to change is always helpful, as long as you keep learning and growing, you can’t go wrong!”

Mr. Ewing believes that New Year’s resolutions can be positive as long as you learn throughout the process.

Director of athletics Chad

Mr. Wabrek also believes that having “a New Year’s resolution that takes you out of your comfort zone is important, because if you’re committed to it, then you have to do it.”

Mr. Player says “I don’t believe in waiting for an arbitrary date to change one’s life for the better.” Mr. Player believes that Jan. 1 is an arbitrary date because “It is only by complete cosmic accident that the spacerock we happen to inhabit takes 365 days to make a full revolution around a ball of fire in the middle of our galaxy.”

Mr. Player understands why people like resolutions and says, “It does make sense that people would want to acknowledge going into a new year by, in some ways, becoming a bit of a new person.”

A few students shared their resolutions for 2023. Junior Eva Tucker shared that her 2023 New Year’s resolution is to “Drink more water.” Eva plans on accomplishing this goal by “trying to drink at least two of my waterbottles a day.”

Junior Uma Graz shared that her New Year’s resolution is “to be less stressed in school”. This is an excellent goal for 2023 that I imagine many other students share.