Resolve

The funny thing about New Years resolutions, I’ve always thought, is how little they have to do with making real changes. Change is an obvious consequence of the progression of time, and if you live in the U.S., it’s next year’s political catch-phrase; but I have trouble associating it with the moment when Dec. 31 becomes Jan. 1. I’ve made countless resolutions—most of them between the ages of seven and fourteen, before the holiday had lost much of it’s confetti-speckled luster, and when I still stayed up until midnight… and then didn’t fall asleep until 5 a.m. for no better reason than because it was new—and I can’t remember a single one of them.

I thought about making a few resolutions this year. They would amount to largely physical changes, like using dental floss between meals (some friends will surely ask if I could floss any more often than I already do), not mooching food off of my boyfriend’s plate at the college dining hall, or writing a blog post every day (which has already been difficult during Winter Break, but will become near impossible). I’ve already broken my yell-less resolution. My boyfriend kindly pointed out to me yesterday that a resolution that sounds like “Do less of X” is ambiguous at best.

Exercise more. Check Facebook less. These are the kinds of resolutions you’d expect to hear from college students like me. But there are some less tangible resolutions I’m going to try to make this year too:

1.) Read more articles like this one, by Nick Kristof. And write more articles like it too. I began following Kristof when he first started making trips to Africa with aspiring journalist and humanitarians, like Will Okun, a Chicago-based photojournalist and school teacher who spoke at UChicago last year, and I have always been inspired by his portraits of some of the most egregious human rights violations in the world, such as the sex traffic addressed in today’s column. This is exactly the kind of socially responsibility I want my own writing to embody.

2.) Declare myself … or at least a minor. Technically, I declared two majors last year: Law, Letters and Society (LLSO), and Fundamentals: Issues and Texts. I know, it is sounds like six majors, and it was too much to juggle. Both are intensely interdisciplinary and together appealed to my desire to study law, politics, rhetoric, sexuality, irony, thinkers like Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and Plato—the list goes on. I dropped the latter major at the end of Autumn Quarter, and I’m still not sure if it was the right decision. But I know that if I stay with LLSO I will have my work cut out for me, with 13 classes spanning the sociology, public policy and English departments, and a 30-page B.A. paper. So when I get back to campus I’m filling out a “consent to complete a minor” form for Art History. (More on that later-it's not cognitive dissonance, it's just a lot of U of C work.)

3.) Keep fewer secrets. One of my closest high school friends got me a copy of PostSecret the collaborative art project-turned internet sensation-turned book; a collection of anonymous postcards adorned with testy and teary “secrets,” such as “I hate people who reply to all on emails” and “I hated my childhood.” Ironically, the collages have made me more upbeat than melancholic, but it also reminded me of how painful secrets can be. Several of the people closest to me came out last year, showing me how difficult it is to share something about yourself that you don’t even want to know at times. In 2008 I saw and heard people respond to our secrets in sometimes unexpected, sometimes loving and sometimes immensely negative, judgmental ways.

I want to have the courage in 2009 to banish some of the shame that keeps me “righteously indignant,” on behalf of those anonymous secret-writers, yet uncomfortable sharing more than this broken link in a blog with my name on it.

And with that, here’s to 2009.