It’s New Year’s Eve. It’s that time of year where families get together to celebrate the dropping of a ball as it rolls in the new year. For college students, it’s that time of year where stupid people get together to get stupid drunk to wake up the next morning in China with a stupid hangover, realizing then that they still have another 31 days before the year of the Horse.
Anyway, it’s also that time of year where you wait in anticipation, planning to break every one of your new years resolutions. Because really, it’s only inevitable. Everyone plans to start on a new diet or create some ridiculous milestone that you normally wouldn’t attempt to achieve any other time of the year, only to lose all resolve and give up in defeat a week or so later. But it doesn’t always have to be this way, does it?
The problem that most people run into is that they don’t actually plan. They just get some brilliant idea that suddenly pops into their brain and say, “Hey, that’s a great idea! I’m gonna do it!!!” and later end up in a state of apathy when they realize that their grand scheme wasn’t so grand after all. It’s like when you write a book without an outline and you end up at chapter 10 wondering where you were even going with it. Then before long, you forget about the book entirely. But if you write the outline, you’ll actually want to see for yourself how the story plays out.
So what should a college student’s resolutions be? Among your list, one or two of them should at least be school related. Here’s an example of a few:
1. Get a Job.
You need one. Seriously. Not only is it the most practical and realistic means of getting money for your degree, but it’s also good for networking as each new job you take can lead to bigger and better opportunities. But to get anywhere you must continue to build on your portfolio and being involved in organizations. Another thing too that would be good to pick up is an internship.
2. Achieve Straight A’s
A little over ambitious in my opinion, but I’ve heard students say this many times. How do they plan on doing this? Study…a lot. It’s not enough to just study, but to know how to study. Along with that, you must also be familiar with the art of note-taking.
3. Work on a Big Project
If nothing else, do stuff. If it applies to your degree and you really enjoy doing it (should be the other way around, but whatever), then do it. If you want a career in animating, then there’s no better way to tell employers that you know what you’re doing by showing them a project you’ve done on your own.
The trick of course is figuring out how to do it. But with the number of tutorials that are out there on the interwebs, the only thing holding you back is practice, which will come with time.
Even if your new years resolution involves dieting, it should be backed up with a plan. And every good plan is a result of thorough research, so it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to hit the books (or the interwebs) and find out the best approach to your resolution.
But what if you’re one of those people who’ve planned everything out, but end up staring at a blank page on day one? You’re bound to come to those kinds of days quite often. In fact, I originally planned on writing a list of reasons why you shouldn’t get as drunk as a skunk over the holidays, but the thought of people drowning themselves in stupidity only made me want to crawl in bed and cry bitter tears of sorrow, so I decided to take a different approach instead.
Likewise, if you find yourself in a rut, take a different approach. It doesn’t do any good to stall because you’ll only end up convincing yourself to drop the whole idea altogether. Keep pushing forward. If you’ve done all your planning beforehand, everything else should just fall into place.
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