Wondering how to make this year better than the last? Try making a New Year’s resolution. There’s certainly no doubt last year was chaotic, but we must make the most out of our situation and try to come back even stronger. A New Year’s resolution can help you make this year a good one. 

  Goal making is an important life skill you can learn at school, home, or work. Goals allow you to focus on important things, like becoming the best you possible. 

  “Setting those goals gives me something to strive for, and when I achieve those goals I go set new ones so I am always trying to better myself some way,” junior Austin Stalwick said. 

  Setting goals can help in many different ways whether that’s physically or academically. But, goals will always help you improve mentally.  

  “When you accomplish something you’ve been trying to achieve you get a good feeling of your accomplishment and you start feeling happy and positive,” sophomore Elida Hernandez said. 

  Positivity and growth are exactly what we need during these times. Goals can bring happiness and accomplishments. 

  “You have to narrow down your goal, make sure it is meaningful to you, that you can achieve it, that it is worth your time, and that it is time-bound… so you aren’t just telling yourself that you will do it, but that it is linked to dates and actions,” AVID and Spanish teacher Alison Brink said. 

   As seen in the picture to the left SMART goal must be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. After making a balanced and realistic goal, you must compare it to time. 

  Having a set time limit can motivate you to get it done on time. The key is to keep in mind the other aspects when setting the time limit.  

  “Usually, I can go from setting goals weekly to monthly, depending on how large my goal is,” Stalwick said. 

  A New Year’s resolution can be small or big, but it must be clear enough to keep track of and evaluate at the end. 

  “A resolution is a firm decision to do or not do something so saying I won’t procrastinate this year could be a resolution. But is it specific enough?” Brink said. 

  Having a clear and trackable goal is necessary, but so is achievability.

  “Last time I had a New Year’s resolution was years ago, it was getting all A’s in my classes, it didn’t last long, but I had pretty good grades in the end,” Hernandez said.

  Having straight A’s is a fairly common goal for students, but what happens if you don’t end up completing your goal? 

  “You need to revisit your goals frequently!!! If you start to slip you are human. We all make mistakes. We also have the opportunity to recover from our errors so you need to be deliberate in examining your actions,” Brink said.

  If you find that you cannot complete your original goal, it’s okay to scale back and renegotiate the steps, but before that, you need to determine if this goal is even worth adjusting. 

  Creating a goal has many aspects, but to help you go through them, a SMART goal chart is linked below and posted above as a picture. It’s an easy and effective way to make a goal for yourself.