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Here we are again, at the start of another school year. This seems like a more appro­pri­ate time for stu­dents to make res­o­lu­tions than at the begin­ning of the cal­en­dar year, and it is espe­cially impor­tant to form good study habits at the begin­ning of a new pro­gram. So, just for the record, here are mine:

1. More read­ing! — This has two parts. First, I resolve never to attend a class meet­ing this semes­ter with­out hav­ing read the assigned mate­r­ial in its entirety. We’ve all failed to do so before, for what­ever rea­son — we’re too busy, it’s too many pages or too bor­ing, or what­ever. But now I’m in a pro­gram that I am totally inter­ested in, and with­out teach­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties on top of my course­work. As such, there is really no excuse for not doing the assigned read­ing. Which brings us to the sec­ond part of the read­ing res­o­lu­tion: I should also have plenty of time to read at least two books per month (either fic­tion or non­fic­tion) in addi­tion to the assigned read­ing for courses. I’d really like to increase that to one extra book per week, but I guess I’ll work up to it. Will be track­ing this with Goodreads.
2. More writ­ing! — I’ve heard it time and time again: to become a good writer, you must write reg­u­larly and copi­ously, even if non­com­mit­tally. I believe that this is good advice, and yet I have never taken it… until this semes­ter. From now on, I’m going to write blog posts of ideas as I have them, instead of stash­ing them away in Ever­note, never to see the light of day. Or, if I have a term paper idea, I plan to test it out with a few pages instead of with a few sen­tences. It’s not as if I’m going to run out of ink or something.
3. Less inter­net! — I’m mildly con­cerned with the pos­si­bil­ity that the inter­net is decreas­ing our atten­tion spans, and so on. More impor­tantly, though, it sucks up too much of my time and, although I learn some stuff from surf­ing around and read­ing blogs, it never gives me a sense of accom­plish­ment. So Google Reader needs to shift from being my main source of read­ing to a minor one. And I will use it at night, instead of in the morn­ing when catch­ing up on the blogs can eas­ily derail my plans for the entire day.
4. More social­iz­ing! — I am kind of a loner, espe­cially aca­d­e­m­i­cally. I basi­cally avoid engag­ing with my col­leagues out­side of class, hate shar­ing papers in progress, and have begun even to avoid dis­cussing aca­d­e­mic stuff on social sites. But to be an aca­d­e­mic loner is bad for you  - it deprives you of expo­sure to new ideas, prac­tice in cri­tiquing and being cri­tiqued, and net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. So, I plan to stop being so aca­d­e­m­i­cally antisocial.

Best wishes for a suc­cess­ful school year to all my fel­low stu­dents. Or, enjoy not being in school, as the case may be :-)

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