I’m not normally one to make New Year Resolutions for the same reason I’m not planning out who I want to marry and what can of a house I want ten years after graduation: Life happens. Whenever I made a foolproof plan of what I wanted to do as a kid it never panned out exactly the way I envisioned it in my head. I didn’t want to go to Cristo Rey New York at first because I was caught up in another Catholic school which doesn’t even come close to my high school experience and I didn’t even think of going to Boston College until I saw my acceptance package in the mailbox. Each time I planned a big decision out I feel as if an unexplainable force closed doors I had my sight set on and opened doors towards opportunities intended for me to partake.
Nothing is truly guaranteed in life with each day carrying an obstacle to overcome. Instead of setting a goal or planning out my life for an entire year or more, I’ve started to set mini daily goals compatible to whatever challenge I may face so that I may complete my ultimate goal through my accumulation of small victories without worrying about my commitment over a long period of time. In philosophical terms, it would be like reaching an immediate or smaller end goal such as getting an A on an exam repeatedly in order to complete an ultimate end goal such as getting into a good college, but since some of you may end up annoyed at the long windedness of Plato and other Greek philosophers in your philosophy classes later on I’ll end my analogy there.
While there’s a lot of important deadlines and objectives to meet applying to colleges, there’s so much more once you get into college that you could go crazy thinking of all the responsibilities you’ll need to meet academically, socially, and financially. With each stage the goals and stakes become a lot bigger as you mature. By setting small goals now along the way it improves your ability to multitask and to adapt to whatever life throws at you. The struggle to meet deadlines doesn’t change no matter where you go to school or choose to study the only thing that changes is what deadline you’re looking to meet and what’s at stake if you don’t meet it. As mostly all of you stressed over college applications and will scramble to complete financial aid forms, in a few years you’ll worry about internship applications, abroad programs applications, how you’ll pay to go abroad, and career paths after graduation on top of your other responsibilities. It’s a never ending hamster wheel of objectives and responsibilities that’s part of the struggle of life. Though it sounds daunting, nothing worth dreaming is easy to achieve. You have to put in a lot of hours if you want to do great things. Make 2016 the year that you tackle your biggest dreams by winning the small victories of completing challenges every day.