In­tro­vert-Friendly Saint Self Care Guide Re­al­is­tic Res­o­lu­tions

This will be my 22nd New Year’s, and my 15th new se­mes­ter of school. Since mid­dle school, I have strug­gled with hav­ing long pe­ri­ods of time off of school, and the so­ci­etal prac­tices of New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions. In honor of try­ing to lis­ten to my body, I will not be mak­ing a cat­e­gories-list of im­prove­ments, be­cause it has never worked for me. The biggest im­prove­ment in my life I have made is go­ing ve­gan. While eat­ing a Taco Bell Crunch­wrap, I de­cided I did­n’t like meat any­more, and days later, dairy tasted gross to me. It was the kick­start­ing mo­ment of lis­ten­ing to my body, and mak­ing a dras­tic change that I could­n’t have done if I put it on pa­per. Every­thing is eas­ier if you ac­tu­ally want to do it, only to make your­self happy.

Every­body has dif­fer­ent views on whats works for them. Fourth year Bi­ol­ogy ma­jor, Sa­van­nah Maa, has a good mind­set go­ing into the New Year. “I’m a col­lege stu­dent, I don’t have time to take tons of breaks. Per­son­ally, I think set­ting goals that are out of reach is­n’t good for any­one’s men­tal health. Hav­ing some­thing to work to­wards, like a smaller, more gen­eral goal, is a good way to stay mo­ti­vated while not dev­as­tat­ing your­self.” 

There are var­i­ous ways peo­ple can pre­pare them­selves for suc­cess for a new se­mes­ter of school. “Set­ting daily plans for my up­com­ing se­mes­ter’s sched­ule is my fa­vorite way to fig­ure out when I will have breaks to take care of my­self or do home­work through­out the day.” Find­ing that bal­ance in class and home­work time in ad­vance is com­fort­ing to have a nice game plan go­ing in. 

Some­times peo­ple get a lit­tle stir crazy when they have too much time on their hands, and Maa is one of them. “Work­ing out keeps me mo­ti­vated, the busier I set my sched­ule to be, the more pro­duc­tive I am. I have to bal­ance be­tween tak­ing a break, but not a long enough one that throws me off track”. Notic­ing those pat­terns in your­self and con­tin­u­ing to do what works for you is the best way to suc­ceed. 

Some­times over-prepar­ing can be a thing, so make sure not to get too in-over your head in plan­ning. “I’m the type of per­son that gets over­whelmed. I want to go to med­ical school, so look­ing at the whole process can be dis­cour­ag­ing but I just re­mind my­self to fo­cus on one step at a time, which can ap­ply to any area in life.” I try to re­mem­ber that when I’m in the height of my school stress, even­tu­ally it will go away and I have al­ways made it through every­thing else. Take things one day, class, or as­sign­ment at a time!