Liz's English Blog: Try harder this year.

I've resolved to be a better person all around this year, both in health and personality. I've decided that it would be beneficial to my health for me to give up soda and fast food, and instead drink water and eat food from home. I joined a gym last week, so that should help get be into better physical condition.

Something else has been bugging me this year, and that's been the fact that I haven't been very considerate toward others lately. Perhaps I have not been impolite right in front of people I dislike, but I have been doing a lot of talking behind people's backs. While I'm not necessarily very friendly to these people, I still feel like a hypocrite for not saying what is on my mind to the people I complain about. From now on, I'm going to try my hardest to be a better person toward people who maybe aren't even nice to me, or who annoy be, regardless of who they are or what they do, because I don't know their motivations for behaving in a way that bothers me or what goes on behind closed doors. Everyone could use a friend.

I am also going to try to get my grades back up. Especially this year, my grades have really plummeted in math and science, and I've let them drop because I have convinced myself that I am just inherently bad in those subjects. Whether or not this is true, I've decided to abolish that attitude for the rest of my high school career. I am going to try my best to succeed in classes that I'm not necessarily good in or fascinated by. I know plenty of people who don't really understand trigonometry or physics, but they get good marks in those classes, so what's stopping me?

I think I've set relatively simple goals for myself for 2009, and I'm going to try my hardest to not only stick to them this year, but for the rest of my life as well.