It seems to be a ritual: party our brains out on Dec. 31, go against most of our standards, get our fill and kiss way too many people at midnight. Then wake up the next day and pledge to ourselves another New Year’s resolution, since last year’s was clearly running out of gas or had been parked on the side of the road since late January.

We swear we’re going to exercise more faithfully, we promise to be more devoted to our friendships, be more dedicated at basketball practice, cut off a bad relationship, save more money, volunteer more often, make attempts at punctuality. Do you want me to continue? I can keep haunting you with the ghosts of New Year’s Eve resolutions of the past.

Resolutions are fun to set. We tally up last year’s shortcomings and look to the new year with the optimism of improvement. Some dedicated and becoming souls last all the way until spring break. My heroes.

The older we get it the more it seems that we are less disappointed and hardly notice when we fail ourselves. It’s almost an American tradition to make a resolution and laugh with our friends at how quickly we break it.

How is it that our resolutions are as short-lived as a Dennis Rodman marriage? Maybe we set our standards too high, or we’re not specific enough. Maybe I just hang with the wrong crowd because I’ve never met someone who was still structuring his or her life around their resolution in November. Congratulations to you if you don’t fit the profile of the New Year’s “reso-loser.”

Let’s try and get all the way through spring break with our resolutions somewhere in sight. There might be more benefits than just simple pride that come from keeping them. There’s a domino effect that can happen here.

Let’s say you promised yourself you’re not going to cut classes. Imagine the miraculous occurrence that you stick to it. You’ll boost your grade, and not just because your teacher will favor you, but because you’ll have attended every class, except for that one day you had to call in because your 21st birthday was the night before and all your “friends” at the Zoo convinced you that is was “the right thing to do.”

Go ahead and give yourself that small margin to work with. But suppose that’s the only class you miss all semester. You will never miss any information that is given in class, which makes you more knowledgeable for tests and papers, and gives you no excuses to forget when something’s due.

Your professor and the hot chick that sits next to you will gain more respect for you. Maybe a younger kid in class might notice that you attend class faithfully, so he feels compelled to do the same. Believe it or not but your roommates will have a harder time reinforcing their belief that they don’t have to go to class.

These things can be contagious. Think of how great the world could be if we could just keep our resolutions. Okay not really, but you could be more proud of your life and have some effect on the people around you.

We should be okay when we get set back a little. Okay even when we blatantly put up our middle finger to our resolution we should laugh at ourselves. It’s pretty comical how lazy we are, but we don’t have to quit.

I was actually going to eliminate procrastination this year. I’m writing this article the morning that it’s due to my editor. It’s January 13, so how am I doing? Better luck next week is all I can say.