Seven Hills students are eager to make some new habits and change their lives for the better in the New Year. As the school community celebrates, many students share similar resolutions and goals that they have set for 2025. Let’s dive into some of these resolutions and break them down into goals.
One of the major trends across the student community around The Seven Hills Upper School appears to be working on improving screen time and getting rid of the negativity posed by social media. Junior Adi Nayak plans to “Eliminate the negativity, delete things such as TikTok that only bring bad things.” Adi believes that social media can bring negativity into one’s life regardless of circumstance, and fellow junior Victoria Rodriguez agrees with his message. “I deleted all of my social media,” Rodriquez said. “I just realized that I was using it too much and it was taking too much time out of my life especially in junior year with everything being so ramped up and busy. I kind of have to focus on those things, and I feel like it’s really bad for mental health in general.” It appears that juniors hold strong feelings and advise against the use of social media as part of their New Year’s resolution, claiming that it not only has negative effects on academic performance but also on mental health.
While many students in the community choose to limit time and interaction with certain apps on their phones as part of their New Year’s resolution, others focus on presenting kindness to both their family and friends. Sophomore Stephen Gerhardt said that his New Year’s resolution is “To show more appreciation to my parents. You know, sometimes I just think to myself, ‘wow, they really give me the world’. I don’t always give them gratitude for that and I feel like that’s something I should do more.” Sophomore Layla Young agrees with Stephen’s statement about kindness, but also wants to apply it to more people outside of just family. “My New Year’s resolution is to be kind to people even when you think that they don’t deserve it and even when they are mean to you… you should still be nice to them because you never know what they may be going through,” Young said. It is clear that aside from personal challenges, the Seven Hills student body plans to go outside the box and return kindness to people they find closest to them or even people they do not know well. Wise words come from both Gerhardt and Young regarding gratitude and respect as a goal for their New Year’s resolutions.
Teacher’s also have quite a bit to say regarding personal and classroom resolutions they have made for 2025. Head of Upper School Mr.Tate has set resolutions for both himself and the faculty, hoping to grow through his personal life as well as the school community in 2025. For faculty, his goal is to “Better apply principles of understanding by design to our course planning. What that means is having all things clear at the beginning and throughout the course and asking ourselves how we could make our instruction and backward planning at the center of everything in our planning world.” Mr. Tate believes this goal would help teachers keep organized when instructing classes whilst informing students of future content and preparing them in a more effective way. Mr.Tate, of course, set a personal resolution for himself as well, one that revolves around developing his skill in music. “My goal for this year is to play anything,” Tate said. “Even if it’s one song or 30 seconds on my trumpet every day. I’ll leave it sitting out in my living room so it’s obvious for me to just pick it up, play it, and then I’ll know I have succeeded in my goal. One thing that’s interesting about goals is there’s a day on the calendar called Quitters Day on the 10th of January which is when most people have given up on their resolutions. Even if you’ve quit, it’s never too late to get back on track and get going again.” Mr Tate had been a professional Trumpet player for six years before his teaching career. However, since then, he has mostly chosen to play when requested by friends or family. For his New Year’s resolution, he hopes to turn his love for music around and get back into playing the trumpet.
Both students and teachers of the Seven Hills community are passionate about bringing change into both their personal lives as well as the communities. As with every new year, 2025 is a year of promise and new beginnings, and the Seven Hills community is ready to celebrate and reach new milestones with it.