However, there are several things I should consider pledging as the ball drops. Whether you’re stuck on your own resolution, or just need a fresh start with the new year, the following are some resolutions that many of us should consider.

1. I will go to the gym regularly.

When 2008 struck, I was on a regular gym regime, and resolved to keep at it and lose ten more pounds. I did. Then summer hit, and I found that poolside cocktails and outdoor keg parties were taking their toll on my thighs. The fact that this semester has been excruciating contributes to my lack of gym time, and isn’t helping my quest to tone up. Losing weight and getting in shape is one of the most common New Years resolutions, but it’s also one of the hardest to keep. Still, if you have taken to wearing sweats to class every day because you can’t zip up the skinny jeans you bought in August, you may want to give the gym a go next year.

2. I will quit drunk dialing/drunk texting/ drunk Facebooking.

Waking up in the morning and being surprised by your call log is not a good thing. And being drunk on Facebook means that you can send messages, write inappropriate things on peoples’ walls, create ridiculous drunken status messages, and now even drunk FB-Chat someone. Yikes! If you have consistently getting texts on Sunday mornings from random people saying, “WTF?” you may want to leave the phone at home and turn off your computer before you go to the bar.

3. I will do my homework in advance.

Most college students deserve a minor (or a double major) in procrastination. We blow off our assignments until the last minute, then freak out, plow through a paper, and turn it in while it’s still warm from the printer. The problems with this practice are that A) stressing ourselves out is unhealthy; B) we often let the window of remaining time shrink with each assignment, until we are trying to pound through six chapters of Philosophy on the walk to a midterm; C) procrastination doesn’t leave room for revision; and D) when we leave things until the last minute, a printer problem can be detrimental. Trying to put school assignments before bar nights is a good way to make the grade this spring.

4. I will not let my boss light shots of Sambuca on fire in my mouth at the bar.

What? Is that just me?

5. I will wash my sheets more than once a month.

If you’re in a dorm with bunkbeds or lofted beds, changing your sheets is a pain in the ass. Besides, between balancing a class schedule, an active social life, and a part-time job, who has time to take off the pillowcases and lug your comforter to the laundry room? Hey, if you knew what lurks between dirty sheets, you will make time.

6. I will only choose one “main course” at the dining hall.

Not piling chicken parm pizza, macaroni and cheese, and mashed potatoes on your plate can take a lot more will-power than you’d think, especially after five back-to-back classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays (gotta love block scheduling and four-day-weekends). Still… just because the dining hall is free, doesn’t mean you need to load up every day.

7. I will remain composed when my basketball team plays our rivals, even when the other team is up two points with fifteen seconds to go in the game and the ref isn’t calling any of their fouls.

Perhaps if you are making this resolution, you will also want to promise yourself not to get into altercations with a fan after the game. I’m from UConn, and there were many heated moments at Syracuse games that stain my past. I still get tingles of rage when someone mentions the name “Gerry McNamara.” But hey, I’m working on it.

8. I will only have sex sober in 2009.

That’s a good one if you’ve been letting Captain Morgan influence your libido lately. The guy at the bar putting all of your drinks on his tab might not be too happy about it, but this one will save you from the walk of shame when March comes in like a lion.

9. I won’t swear and say I hate my school the next time I can’t get the required courses for my major, or I fail a class because my TA doesn’t speak English, or financial aid decides to rape me in the arse.

Because, come on. Even though every semester, something is bound to come up to “ruin your life” for the time being, at the end of the day, when you’re with your bestests at happy hour, reminiscing about “the time when….” you know that you really love your school. Otherwise, you would have transferred months ago.

10. I will be a moral, upstanding citizen.

Yeah, if anyone can give me some tips on that one, I’d really appreciate it. Although I did give some beggars on the New York subway a few quarters the other day, so maybe there’s hope after all.

On my list of all-time most annoying things in the entire world, having long hair ranks right up there with people who purposely screech their fingernails on chalkboards and drivers who cut you off and then give you the finger.

I don’t mind long hair on other people (especially guys, ‘cuz that’s hot). I mind long hair on me. My hair is so unimaginably thick that any significant length just makes it fall flat and stick to my skull. I once tried to get a perm, but my hair was flat again within an hour. How screwed up is that?

Plus, I’m a low-maintenance kind of girl, and I just don’t have the patience for long hair. It takes forever to shampoo and condition, and brushing it in the morning takes 30 seconds that I could really spend doing something else (sadly, I’m serious).

So since about the age of 12, I’ve never had hair longer than shoulder-length. Too much work! I’ve known about Locks of Love for a while, but I just figured I’d never have hair long enough to be able to donate.

Locks of Love, for those of you not familiar with it, is a charity organization that uses hair donations to fashion cool hairpieces for children who are bald or losing their hair for a variety of medical reasons. It’s a great cause, and the kids really appreciate the hairpieces.

Unfortunately, you have to chop off at least 10 full inches of hair to donate. You can have layered hair with 10 inches being the length of the longest layer, but still, that’s a lot of hair.

Well, somehow, through a crazy fluke that involved me not getting my hair cut for two years, I had about nine inches of hair to spare near the end of this past year. Since I was so close to the minimum donation length for Locks of Love, I decided to suffer through the maintenance and grow it out until it was long enough to donate.

I am so glad I did. I feel fantastic for helping such a worthy cause, and my new haircut is freaking amazing. I look good. And there’s not only that—if you donate to Locks of Love, many nice salons will give you a great cut for free. Mine did, and that haircut wouldn’t have come cheap otherwise.

So if you’ve got some length to spare, think about Locks of Love. You’ll be making a kid happy and giving yourself a hot new look, and there’s no better combination than that.

Reuters and the United Nations report that Reese is the driving force behind a partnership with Avon in a campaign to end violence and discrimination against women.

High-five, Reese!

To fund the campaign, Avon will soon be selling women’s empowerment bracelets online with all profits going toward the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). Avon has pledged to match the first $500,000 the bracelets make, for a total donation of $1 million. Yowza. In a further move of awesome, the bracelets are actually affordable for most women (at $3 a pop).

Reese is the Avon Global Ambassador, which I think is basically a fancy title meaning that she’s one actress who actually walks the walk of helping people in need around the world. If the rest of Hollywood ripped a page out of Reese’s book, I can only imagine how much money and success charities would have.

As long as I’m on the topic of giving Reese Witherspoon high-fives, I’m going to give her another one for dating Jake Gyllenhaal. Talk about a good move!

Great judgment in ethics and in men: that’s our Reese.

Even though I’m “poor” compared to a lot of Americans, I realize I’m fabulously rich compared to most of the world’s people. So, every once in a while I try to help out others by donating a few dollars to charity.

I don’t donate as much as I should, and I’m working to get better at that. But for those of you who are strapped for cash like I am, two Web sites have made it really easy to donate without reaching for your credit card.

The Hunger Site is part of a group of six Web sites (the Breast Cancer, Child Health, Literacy, Rainforest, and Animal Rescue sites are the others) that rely on sponsor donations to help charities. If you click once daily on the big button on each site, sponsors will donate a small amount for all the causes on your behalf.  Cool, huh?

And if you’re a word nerd like me, you might like FreeRice. It’s a vocabulary quiz site that works through the United Nations to donate 20 grains of rice for each word definition you guess correctly. If you play for even five minutes, you can donate about 900 grains of rice.

So click, click, click away! These are charities that both your wallet and your mouse can appreciate.