It’s the end of the semester for college students everywhere. For us, the end of the semester is basically the end of the year. While most people wait until December 26th through January 1st to make New Year’s Resolutions, college kids make them much sooner. Whenever your semester ends, usually around December 10thish through the 20th or maybe even December 25th if you go to Drexel *Shots Fired*, you start to make New Semester’s Resolutions instead.

I’m going to find that balance of party and work next semester.

I’m going to workout in the gym more often next semester.

I’m going to stop eating dessert in the dining hall.

I’m going to be so organized next semester.

I’m going to attend all my classes.

I’m going to be focused.

I’m going to…

The Universal New Semester's Resolution. Study more.

Once our final grades are posted, we resolve to do better next year. We contemplate and reflect for a moment. Then we go home for break, let loose, have fun, come back in January and fall back into our usual routine with no adjustment. It’s like we never made that vow to do better. Don’t get me wrong. I’m guilty of not following through on my New Semester’s Resolutions as well. Let me tell you about my semester.

I got the flu in either October or November. I don’t remember now but I was out cold as I wrote about here. I missed two weeks of school and thought I was dying. Now truth be told I could have recovered from this sickness, emailed my profs, told them what was up and I would have been okay. But there’s this thing called self-handicapping. Essentially it means you purposely sabotage yourself so you can blame your failure on your situation. For example, I didn’t purposely get sick but since I did I decided to blame everything that happened that semester on my flu aka brush with death. I forgot to bring my book to class? Dang. This swine flu is no joke. I missed a quiz by accident? H1N1 is an epidemic!

Don’t worry loyal readers, my grades are too legit. Too legit to drop out of school quit. Still, so many of us will be making New Semester’s Resolutions of this type. To do better in school. Improve our grades. Be more involved on campus. Branch out of our little social networks and meet new people. Whatever your new resolution is my only advice is to WRITE. IT. DOWN. Trust me. You’re probably already home by now or somewhere on vacation. Your mindset of “new resolution” is going to be long gone by the time you arrive back on campus in January. Write it down so that you remember your commitment.

Earlier this week I had my last final exam before I could go home. I was in bed thinking about what I had learned over this past semester and couldn’t spit out one fact…. But I have an A in the class. So I grabbed my iPod touch and hopped on twitter to broadcast my thoughts because that’s what bored cool kids do.

Like I said, don’t get me wrong. Grade Point Averages are very important in the American Education System. Whether or not the American Education System should be using GPAs is a different story. The point is, what good is a 4.0 going to do me if I leave college with the same information I came in with? That’s not to undermine the education I’m receiving. I’ve learned a lot. It’s just there are certain classes I take that I legitimately learn nothing. There is one class where the only thing I learned was that in order to get an A you just need to reiterate what your prof says. I would have a paper prompt and I wouldn’t even write my own opinion anymore. I’d just write a response that I knew my professor would agree with. Is that wrong? Probably. But I got an A so you can’t tell me nothing.

I kid, I kid. That is wrong. The only classes I’ve truly loved aside from my Major classes are the ones I take for my African-American Studies minor. Requirement classes in areas outside of your major seem like a good idea on paper. But so does Communism. And I think we can all agree that doesn’t work out too well. I’ll talk about that in another post, though. The point is, my New Semester’s Resolution is to actually learn. Priority number 1 is always to get good grades so that’s not really a new resolution for me. I want to actually learn things that can apply to my life. Knowledge is power.

What are your New Semester’s Resolutions? Better grades? New friends? Visit home more? Not go home every weekend to do laundry? Network? Get that desired internship? Let me know!