A New Year!! Weeee!!!

It’s a new year! Weeee!! (Or almost will be when this is posted)

Strange enough, New Year’s Eve/Day is one of my favorite holidays(?) (is it really a holiday if it’s really just a calendar-ic happenstance?) And it’s not because I’m out drinking champagne and partying it up like it’s 1999 till the midnight ball drop. I’m usually in bed by 9 pm, like every day. The reason I like New Year’s Eve/Day is because I am someone who tends to make lots and lots of goals for the upcoming year. Though I wasn’t always like that, and last year was a bit of an exception.

It all began in graduate school… (wavy color image looking to past transition)

Wait! No! It began before that! But I won’t go into that digression. That was all about giving up pop (or soda, or coke, or whatever your regional dialectical word for a fizzy fountain drink is) and going vegan. The actual setting of annual goals, however, began in graduate school. So, that’s where I’ll begin.

As an overly eager, go-get-’em, early graduate student, I wanted to do all I could do to excel in my studies and research. One thing I thought would be helpful was to get a whiteboard for my apartment so that I could write out metabolic pathways, enzymatic reaction mechanisms, or mathematical equations for my more technical classes. And for the most part it was quite helpful. This is something I picked up from college when teaching supplemental instruction through the TRiO program Student Support Services. Writing out material and studying by writing on whiteboards helped immensely. Eventually classes ended. Suddenly I didn’t have a use for my whiteboard.

So, now what was I to do with it?

At some point during my graduate school time I decided to undergo a renovation of self, so to speak. I started exercising, running, biking, walking, eating vegan, journaling, etc., etc. There were lots of changes. Which I would imagine is not so different from most people who go through the grind of graduate school. You come out a different person. But for that whiteboard I decided that I would use it to list out goals I wanted to accomplish. It was in the spirit of New Year’s resolutions…made sometime in July, I think. So, mid-New Year’s resolutions! And I am still a big advocate of mid-year resolutions. Or whenever. Now resolutions are much better than any arbitrary time point delineated by the revolution of this rocky planet around the Sun.

I listed out goals I thought would make me a better person and improve my overall self. That included health and physical well being by exercise and a vegan diet, meditating for improved mental health, and donating a certain percentage of my monthly income to nonprofits. I was trying to do as much good as I could, both for myself and for others. And by putting those goals front and center, prominently displayed in my studio apartment, would force me to confront those goals every day. Every time I got out of bed, there was the whiteboard. Every time I exercised, there was the whiteboard. Every time I watched TV or used my computer, there was the whiteboard. And it was effective.

I began in 2016. Unfortunately I don’t think I have a full image of the 2016 board, but a tradition I now have for myself is close to the end of the year I take a picture of my whiteboard with my goals and review what I had and had not accomplished. Then I erase it all and start over with new goals and continuations of habits I want to continue. Below are the images I have from 2017 through 2022, along with a partial close up of 2016’s board―JETPACK COW! I have no idea why, but another tradition is to draw a cartoon cow on the board. It’s something that popped into my head, and so I drew it out. Each year’s a new cow in a new way.


2016 JETPACK COW!!


2017 ALSO JETPACK COW!!


2018 JETPACK COW…with a bowl of rice in a cone of fire!!


2019 SMITTY COW!!


2020 MIGHTY COW!! (you know, after forging the sword for a year)


2021 Angel cow.


2022 COW CLIMBER!! (keep on climbing…keep on climbing…)


Somewhat unintentionally I was using the SMART goal setting technique, i.e. specific, measurable, achievable, relevant/realistic, timely. This is where goals are set with specific measurements in place to be met in a specified time frame rather than being overly vague. For example, during my first 2 to 3 years of graduate school I was receiving an additional fellowship on top of my research assistantship. I decided to pay it forward by giving to nonprofits. But rather than saying a vague, nonspecific goal, such as, “I’ll give more in the new year” I made it be much more specific. My goal was, “I’ll give 10% of my income to two nonprofits each month.” And I kept to it for the year.

A more relevant goal came in 2017 when it was time to finish graduate school: finish the last lab experiments, write out my dissertation, defend, and graduate. And in 2020 it was to finish paying off student loans. Other goals were not so big as graduating from graduate school: run three times a week for a certain amount of miles, eat vegan, write each day for 60 min., etc. Many of my goals have become habits, what I do everyday, that I list them up as continuations year to year.

In 2021 I made lots of goals. And I accomplished many of those goals: publish a paper, find a new job, buy a car, learn/dabble in R and python, among others. Once I moved to my new job it was at the end of the year in 2021. It came time to make New Year’s resolutions for 2022. And…I sort of choked. I felt that I had accomplished so many of my goals in 2021 that I wasn’t really sure what to put down for 2022. I had some simpler goals: go to a museum, a play, run a race, etc. Having finished my postdoc and now working a job that’s not on soft money, I wasn’t sure what to aim for as future goals. My whiteboard was/is a little sparse for 2022. It felt a little bit like giving up.

I’m still not quite sure what to aim for even now going into 2023. But I think, I hope, to try a little harder than I did in 2022. So, in the spirit of New Year’s resolutions and making a new whiteboard, I’ll list out some of the goals that’ll be going up on my board:

The big one is running a marathon. Finally I’ve come to a decision to run a marathon. And I hope many more. As for other goals, there will be more to come once I finally settle on them. As I said, I’m still a little unsure what to aim for. Despite my uncertainty, I still find New Year’s to be my favorite holiday. It’s a perfect time for reflection and renewal. But so is any other time, too.

–TR