Grace Wong
Head News Editor
In light of the new year, a lot of students are setting resolutions, goals or aspirations they hope to achieve in the coming year that are usually forgotten when February rolls around.
Typical resolutions are generally along the lines of becoming a better person or trying new things, like washing the dinner dishes or getting engaged.
Yeah, right.
I’m not talking about the Facebook kind of engaged, when two people have been going out for a couple of weeks and decide to change their Facebook relationship status to reflect their undying commitment to one another for the rest of their lives.
I’m talking about the kind of engagement where a guy gives a girl a diamond ring and promises to marry her.
Although there isn’t any legal paperwork involved, engagement usually occurs after high school.
Besides being a social norm NOT to get engaged during high school (except the Facebook kind), high school students need to face the fact that they’re not mature enough to even consider engagement until they’re able to give the other person everything, including their lives.
Accepting an engagement is probably one of the most important decisions a person can make in his or her lifetime.
Being emotionally stable is an element of maturity that most people recommend before marriage.
Heck, I know seniors that go out with someone for a couple of days, decide they don’t like him/ her, dump him/her and then go out with another person the next day.
Lack of commitment? Check.
I know people who seem to be forever stuck in junior high mode where they have to go through a friend to ask someone out.
Lack of confidence? Check.
And I know people who ask others for advice because they don’t even know their girlfriend or boyfriend that well.
Lack of life experiences? Check.
As the old cliché goes, maturity grows with age. Emotionally stable? I think not.
High school students spend a fourth of their time at school. If they decided they didn’t want to be at school, they would be breaking the law. It’s called truancy. The reason it’s a law is because the country decides that people our age should be in a learning environment.
High school is for learning. There’s no way you can concentrate on schoolwork if you’re planning your wedding day.
Promising yourself to someone this early in life is distracting. If there were 60 hours in a day, then I would say go ahead and promise yourself away. But unfortunately, there are 24 hours in a day and a huge chunk of it is spent at school.
Although we may not like it sometimes, school is good for us. It provides an isolated environment where you can make friends, learn and participate in the community.
If you end up breaking your promise to the other person, you would affect not only the other person, but their circle of friends and their family as well.
Sometimes rules are broken without affecting other people, but promises to others cannot be broken without affecting the other person in some way.
If you’re looking for a new year’s resolution, maybe shoot for something more practical like cleaning your room every day.
Yeah, like that’s going to happen.
