Written by Angelika Santaniello
Illustrated by Sylvain Chan
It’s the New Year and the time for the following, perhaps daunting phrase to be unleashed: ‘New Year, New Me’. For some, a conversation around New Year’s resolutions may be cliché.
A Google search on a Sunday night in January before the start of term with the prompt ‘New Year’s Resolutions’ returned headlines ranging from ‘This year, I’m sticking with achievable New Year’s resolutions. Here are a few’, to ‘A Better Way to Think About New Year’s Resolutions’, and ‘Two words to avoid when making your New Year’s resolution’: the discourse is undoubtedly overwhelming.
It is a difficult task to understand how one is to start the year ‘on the right foot’, so I spoke to a few LSE students about weaving a conversation on New Year’s resolutions.
“A Way For Me to Re-evaluate my priorities”
What do New Year’s resolutions mean to LSE students?
On one hand, Tomas notes that they “mean very little — if anything”. Whenever he has “a certain goal”, he tries to go “towards it immediately”. In contrast, Noah* explains they are “a chance to touch base with [himself] and set out [his] goals for the year”.
Evidently, a conversation about the heart of New Year’s resolutions must be approached in light of its varied nature. As Rose* aptly describes, “New Year’s resolutions are a way for me to re-evaluate my priorities to which I can return to throughout the year!”
For one of The Beaver’s Social editors, Aashi, it is more about probing and personal reflection: “How often do we naturally, through our surroundings, feel pushed to look inward and consider what we might want to change, improve, or reduce in ourselves?”
A central part of New Year’s resolutions is perhaps the atmosphere in which someone can fulfil them. So I asked: “Does LSE create a suitable environment for its students to achieve thrive to their resolutions?”
For Noah, LSE creates an atmosphere facilitating his “career and academic goals”, but “absolutely not” his “wellbeing and creative goals”.
Indeed, some students seem more optimistic about using LSE as a springboard to achieving their New Year’s resolutions. “Generally speaking, LSE provides me with a wide range of possibilities to work on my long- term [ambitions],” Tomas explains. Sharing his excitement, Tomas offered an example: “I have always wanted to master the software R. I [have] am yet to start, but the university does have a comprehensive Digitals Lab course that I could use!”
Aashi, instead, adopts a more holistic approach: “Achieving your resolutions depends on what they are and in what context of your life they arise.”
“Challenging environments make resolutions difficult to [sustain]. So, success often depends on how well you can carve out that time, since your environments, including LSE, will inevitably present obstacles in doing so,” she summarises.
What is perhaps worth exploring more closely is whether a prosperous environment is proffered by the LSE student community. Jack* notes that “LSE has kind of a toxic productivity culture” as “lots of [his] friends have resolutions tied to doing more coursework or securing an internship, and less with personal growth like trying to be more patient or taking time to find fulfilling hobbies.”
However, Rose explains that she has been “really fortunate to find a group of friends whose values and goals align” with her own. In turn, the “experience of sharing our resolutions […] and helping each other stay on the right path” has created a more positive experience for her.
When asked to comment, an LSE spokesperson has stated: “LSE promotes a vibrant cultural community and fully supports and encourages students who wish to pursue creative goals and personal growth outside their studies.
“Arts and music activities available around campus include exhibitions hosted in the Atrium Gallery, lunchtime concerts, the LSE choir and orchestra, photo competitions and LSE Chill, a free performance night hosted by LSE Arts for poets, comedians, musicians and other performers. An arts rehearsal space and music practice room are available for student use in the Marshall Building. LSE welcomes initiatives from students to help facilitate creative activities on campus and full details are available online.
“In addition, a wide selection of opportunities for growth and development outside of academic study are available to browse on the LSE website. These include wellbeing workshops, access to more than 40 sports clubs, information on volunteering, charity societies and community engagement programmes and a Faith and Leadership programme offered by LSE’s Faith Centre.”
“Resolutions are a Great Opportunity, But Some Take Them Too Far”
With that being said, we must unpick the fibres of a ‘New Year’s resolution’ culture at LSE. There is seemingly a blurred line between what is university-controlled and student interpersonal interactions. It is, therefore, crucial to orient such a discussion based on what is healthiest and most comfortable for students.
“I think it’s important to view them as a checkpoint rather than a total reset,” Noah says.
“Setting resolutions should be an act of love towards yourself and an exciting thing to imagine all the growth you can achieve within the year,” he elaborates.
Arguably, however, it is more difficult to focus on growth than it may seem at first glance. According to Jack, “some people take them too far”; it should shift to “actual growth and development as a person.”
Acknowledging that resolutions will “ultimately vary from person to person” is fundamental, and this should be nurtured.
Rose, for example, wants “to conceptualise them less as another thing to check off of [her] to-do list or a chore to complete, but more as helpful guides to reframe how [she thinks]”. It is “qualitative”, not “quantitative”.
“Alternatively, too much focus at this time of year can cause worry about missed goals and the pressure to set and possibly fail at new ones, so a positive reframing is a must,” she says.
Yet, there is a core need to look at a more definitional perspective. Lilly* thinks that “the “new” of a new year is overly emphasised sometimes” and acknowledges that “ultimately nobody ever can actually ‘start over’”, meaning “we only start a new year from where we were on the 31st of December, and that baggage doesn’t go away.”
With this in mind, it is interesting to note what some of these respondents are aiming for this coming year. For one respondent, it’s quite multifaceted: they, to name a few examples, would like to “[try] more pastries”, “[slow] down and [express] gratitude frequently”, “[not use] AI”, and “[read] more critical theory”.
Therefore, whether it is about “reintroducing a sense of play, lightheartedness, and whimsy” into one’s life, learning to “produce music” or “setting boundaries when [one is] uncomfortable with other people’s behaviour”, there is an inherently dynamic quality to a discourse on New Year’s resolutions.
This dynamism may seem obvious — pervasive, even — but it’s something that is crucial to re-emphasise. The, albeit small, sample of students I interviewed seems to probe at a redefinition of the dominant conception of New Year’s Resolutions.
Despite some vibrant, optimistic comments from them, there’s unmistakably a slight animosity towards the paradigm culture around resolutions.
At a university which prides itself on striving ‘to know the causes of things’, there should be a drive to be more mindful about nurturing a healthy, productive discussion on New Year’s resolutions. The question that remains, then, is whether this comes from a student community or from the LSE structure itself.
*Names have been changed to preserve anonymity.
