What’s your New Year’s resolution?

“For this new year, I hope to get back to spending time doing things I love to do, especially drawing and painting. It helps a lot with my anxiety, but since I have been so busy, I haven’t been able to make time for it. As a senior, I also hope to break out of my inner circle and hang out with people I haven’t hung out with recently. So I’ll be focusing on getting better at reaching out to people for study dates, especially for my last semester here.” –Caroline McParland ’23 (biology)

“I love setting intentions rather than making resolutions, and for this year the theme is around being present. To be more in the moment of my life, I plan to hold myself accountable with things like putting my phone away when I get home from work until after my kids go to bed. Eliminating distractions and reducing multitasking will allow me to live more in the moment, as I want to be more present for myself, my colleagues, my students, and my family.” –Melissa Schultz, senior associate director, Gateway Career Center 

“For my New Year’s resolution, I want to continue working on my procrastination. Procrastinating and being punctual are two things I’ve struggled with, but this semester I have been putting effort into not procrastinating and being on time. Shoutout to Google Calendar.” –Jalalle Nourenie ’24 (mathematics and economics, engineering studies)

“For this upcoming year, I want to be more mindful and stay in the moment. When I say ‘staying in the moment,’ I mean being less distracted, less time spent on my phone, and more time spent focusing on the now and what is in front of me.” –Rebecca Shafer, assistant director, career counselor, Gateway Career Center

“For this new year, I want to try my best to curb my habit of procrastination by learning better ways to organize. With my jobs as an RA and at Miss Jackson’s Kitchen, my schedule is always hectic, but learning different ways to organize myself, like using Tasks on Google Calendar, has been really helpful. Learning new organizational strategies like that is probably my biggest New Year’s resolution.” –Lydia Braasch ’24 (engineering studies)

“As a new professor who is also new to Pennsylvania, I hope to bring music into the classroom next semester, engage students in research projects and collaborative learning, and to climb in more outdoor crags in the state.” –Rui Jie Peng, assistant professor of sociology