It all adds up

The start of the semester is a lot like New Year’s. For one thing, students toss their inhibitions to the wind and celebrate with the kind of carefree attitude that quickly erodes away once classes begin again. More importantly, though, we make genuine (albeit tenuous) promises to ourselves that we will eat healthier, stay ahead of our studies and live honorably.

The start of the semester is a lot like New Year’s. For one thing, students toss their inhibitions to the wind and celebrate with the kind of carefree attitude that quickly erodes away once classes begin again. More importantly, though, we make genuine (albeit tenuous) promises to ourselves that we will eat healthier, stay ahead of our studies and live honorably. And, inevitably, these resolutions snap under the stress of deadlines and lack of sleep.

Part of the problem is that it’s easy to foresee yourself adhering to your resolutions even under stress, but it’s much more difficult to deal with going for a run or taking care of some outside reading when you actually find yourself at the end of a long day. The difference between running today and running tomorrow isn’t a big one, and it’s certainly not tough to make up a few pages of extra reading at some point later on.

The best defense for this backlogging problem can be to remember that as the days go by, it all adds up. Take the example of outside reading, a pastime that becomes lamentably buried and lost behind mountains of assigned text. Although a pile of outside reading books might seem like the straw to break your camel’s back, holding yourself to a small, daily allotment of pages can keep the resolution alive.

For instance, a student who wishes to engage in more outside reading over the course of the semester might, instead of selecting a stack of books to be read over the course of a semester, choose to hold himself to 20 pages every night. In doing so, his or her goal for the semester becomes one that he must meet daily and that cannot be put off until some ambiguous date in the future. Furthermore, for those of you resolved to do more outside reading this semester, 20 pages every night from the first day of classes to the last adds up to a total of 2060 pages (20 pages doesn’t have to be the ceiling either, especially not on particularly uneventful evenings). In the end, depending on the respective lengths, this could land you anywhere between 4 and 7 moderately sized books a semester.

Semester resolutions don’t necessarily have to be about racking up pages or shaving off calories, though; they can concern things like saving money, as well. For example, say that you’re a soda drinker and that you drink one can of soda per day. Assuming that these cans are coming from soda machines like the one in the basement of Wannamaker Dormitory, you’ll be paying 85 cents a day for your soda. By the end of the semester, you will have purchased 103 sodas from the drink machine for a total of $87.55. However, had you bought those 103 sodas at Target (in 9 packs of 12, which also gets you 5 extra sodas, for $3.33 apiece), you would have spent $29.97. The difference between the two comes to $57.58, which at least covers much more than the gas you’d spend getting there. To be sure, this is not a staggering sum of extra cash, but it grows when other individual snacks that could also be bought in bulk are taken into account.

As for calorie counters, the sodas put up some interesting numbers in other areas as well. If you’re drinking regular old Coca-Cola, still at one a day and at 140 calories per Coke, you’re ingesting 14,420 extra calories over the course of the semester. This isn’t really a cause for alarm, because all in all that isn’t really that many calories, and because they are also being regularly expended. However, it just serves to illustrate the ways in which a small amount of basic math can help to reinforce the daily desire to work towards a semester-long resolution.

All that being said, a warning is also warranted against over-obsession with these kinds of simple calculations. Certainly it’s okay to have a Coke everyday if you choose, and if outside reading is of no concern to you, then the added advantage of all those pages under your belt is inconsequential. And even if these resolutions are similar to yours, there’s little need for worry over a day or two missed here and there. In fact, taking breaks from these relatively rigorous little schedules ensures against over-saturation and exhaustion.