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Abstract Academic: New New New Year's Resolutions

It’s too hard to look back on last year’s New Year’s resolutions without getting mad at myself. I mean, it’s been three years now that I’ve written a resolutions column in the first week of spring semester, and I don’t seem to be making much progress

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Every year, I put the same things: Eat better, keep up with the news, stop hating school, etc. But another year goes past, and there’s no change. I ate butter, not better; I really only watched ESPN (though I did learn to speak authoritatively on subjects of which I know nothing, much like everyone on the news), and school is . . . eh . . . a wonderful opportunity and not a series of flaming hoops through which I jump like an MLA-formatted poodle.

However, with some degree of success, I did meet a few of last year’s resolutions. I resolved to read more classics (I read “Huckleberry Finn” and watched a few reruns of “Wishbone”), put away my Christmas decorations before January (as long as we don’t specify what day in January, then I’m doing splendidly) and figured out why women love Adele (she’s really, really sad, and she doesn’t look like Taylor Swift).

But, because this is going to be my last resolutions column as a Weber State University student, I plan on going out with style. Specifically, I plan on setting some ridiculous stretch goals, because it’s not like I’ll be publicly accountable a year from now. So, by the end of 2013, I resolve to . . .

. . . lose 60 pounds. I am a larger person, and I’m sick of skinny people telling us larger folks about how easy it is to be healthy these days. The world is full of healthy people trying to out-healthy each other, with all their 5Ks and their microdroplets of salad dressing and their recreational meal-skipping. I figure it will be easier to tell them to be quiet once I become one.

. . . graduate in April without angering the paperwork gods.

. . . be a better husband/pay someone to be a better husband.

. . . make my home safe for the baby we’re expecting. I should really find that python . . .

. . . stop being enraged by the loud and the stupid.

. . . watch one moronically entertaining movie for every snooty, precocious, educational film I see. For every “Argo,” there’s a “Biodome.”

. . . thank all those professors who gave me second and third chances to succeed as a student. Which is basically all of the professors I had, besides maybe two or three.

. . . ignore those two or three professors who, well, ignored me because I was shy, didn’t sit in the front row, didn’t laugh at their three jokes and didn’t care about five-paragraph essays.

. . . campaign for CBS to stop making new sitcoms.

. . . be a little more entrepreneurial.

. . . learn to type “entrepreneurial” without using Spell-Check.

. . . tweet random Tim Tebow rumors to ESPN and see if they make it onto “SportsCenter” (“ESPN’s Adam Schefter confirmed a report earlier today that Tim Tebow was spotted at the IHOP on 12th Street trying to order a Denver omelet. Sources say this signifies regret for moving to New York. How will this affect his bench role with the Jets? What do you think, Brett Favre?”).

. . . be better about laughing politely at words which are intended to be funny, but are not. I wasn’t born with whatever gene it is that allows me to laugh when people make obvious jokes, and I worry that staring blankly at their foreheads until they walk away makes me socially awkward. This includes jokes about the weather, things that strangers say to me on crowded elevators to “break the tension,” classroom discussions on “why guys and girls communicate differently” and “Last Man Standing.”

. . . call into sports talk radio shows and challenge the host’s masculinity.

. . . be less embarrassed and shy about my political opinions, which are . . . eh, maybe another day.

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