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In print | Published January 21, 2010

I never got into the habit of making New Year’s resolutions. It always seemed like a bizarre concept to me, the idea of aiming to establish a new behavior at a rather arbitrary point in time. If I made a New Year’s resolution to exercise this year, what would have changed between Dec. 31, 2009 and Jan. 1, 2010? Does my making a resolution suddenly give me the willpower, the motivation and the time to exercise? Not really, at least not in my experience.

So, no, I’m not into New Year’s resolutions. But I am all about new semester resolutions. New semesters bring new schedules and usually the wisdom gained from previous semesters to make informed changes to routine.

For example, finals period makes you realize you don’t like finishing the semester as a complete zombie and sleeping only three hours a night. The beginning of a new semester allows you to change sleeping habits now, before schoolwork makes you think you can’t afford sleep.

Conversations with friends and hallmates at the beginnings of semesters are usually filled with such resolutions: this semester I’m going to find a balance between work and play or spend more time with friends in Sharples or go to bed at midnight — and so forth.

With that in mind, I propose considering exercise as a resolution to take up this semester. The beginning of the semester offers invaluable flexibility to tinker with ways to add exercise to your routine. Not only do you have a new class schedule, but also the add/drop period generally affords the luxury of a less burdensome workload, since most professors don’t want to hand out large assignments until the class roster is set and some actual learning has taken place.

Now would be a good time to identify where you have gaps in your schedule that could be filled by a walk in the Crum or a trip down to the gym.

Look for mornings when you don’t have class before 10 a.m., or afternoons when you get out of class and wouldn’t otherwise do anything until going to dinner. Remember that nights aren’t off limits for exercise and can be the ideal time for such activities as going to the pool during open swim or attending swing dance in Upper Tarble.

Once you have time identified, you can try out what type of exercise works for which part of your schedule. The hour gap between a 9:30 a.m. and an 11:30 a.m. class might be too short to get any substantive work done or to change for intense exercise, but it would be the perfect length of time to wander through the trails in the Crum or to take a walk through the Ville.

Larger chunks of free time can be a great opportunity to go down to the Mullan Center and explore the variety of exercise options in the gym.

If you have lots of time but don’t think you’ll be able to motivate yourself to schedule exercise regularly, search out an organized activity. We have dance classes, club sports, intramural sports, martial arts clubs, etc., so you should be able to find some regularly scheduled activity that will get you moving.

The hard part about resolutions lies in keeping them. As the semester moves forward, you might be tempted to ditch the exercise part of your routine and fill it with something else.

But Swarthmore students are all about multi-tasking, so if you want to make exercise easier to justify in your mind, then couple it with something else that you need or like to do.

I’m a huge fan of getting massive amounts of reading done while on the stationary bike — that’s how I plan to survive the reading load of two literature classes this spring. If you prefer to use exercise as an escape from schoolwork, try setting up an exercise time with a friend. That way someone will be keeping you accountable, and you can spend the time catching up on life, the universe and everything while taking a stroll in the woods or using the elliptical machine in the gym.

You could also purposely use exercise as alone time and spend it thinking. If you’re into meditation, prayer or just simple reflection, exercise can be a good excuse to get away from noise and distractions.
Try to find something, whatever your preferences may be, that can add to your list of reasons for exercising, and that’ll help you stick with it.

So take advantage of these next few weeks and experiment. Go outside before everything freezes again. Take a friend to the gym with you and poke around all the machines. Walk in the Crum, learn how to dance, play ice hockey with Motherpuckers — just get out and remember how to use your body before schoolwork convinces you that only your brain matters.

Katie is a senior. She can be reached at kbecker1@swarthmore.edu.

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