New Year’s Resolutions can be dangerous territory for people whose confidence is shaky.  Here we sit, at the front door of a new year, and, almost like offering a secret password, we are invited to make all kinds of promises about how we will improve before we walk inside.  I’m a believer in New Year’s Resolutions because I believe that there is always room for at least modest self-improvement (also because I love a project).  But I can easily remember the dawn of 1994 when I was an insecure sophomore in high school.  I laid out an impossible list of arbitrary resolutions that encompassed everything from journaling to my weight to my golf game.

My self-destructive perfectionism at that time is a story for another day.  (And I can happily tell you now that a few months later I blew off my high maintenance list and began accepting myself as I was.)  However, each December as I lay out my best intentions for the coming year I think back on my 16-year-old self as a reminder of how depressing and overwhelming resolutions run amok can become.  I make a point to remind myself that I have lots of great qualities too.

I thought more about this premise of “what’s good about me” this week when a pair of posts got me to thinking about how we (women in particular) can be so reluctant to admit that there actually are lots of great things about ourselves.  The first post was from Kristen at Motherse who confided that she is, like many women, uncomfortable accepting a compliment.  The second post was from Julia Moulden at The Huffington Post who wrote about an exercise she conducted with a number of women wherein she asked them what quality about themselves they love and would never give up.

I find it disheartening to confront the fact that many women (and many quite remarkable women) are so hard on themselves.  We look in the mirror and we see everything that we wish weren’t.  The crow’s feet.  The smudged, end-of-the-day mascara.  The frazzled parent.  The body that doesn’t look quite like it did before we had babies.  And on, and on, and on.

But what of the things we don’t see?  What of the things we dismiss because we’re sure they don’t count?  What about our curious minds?  What about our well-honed opinions?  What about our laughing children?  What about our rich, time-worn friendships?  What about 30-odd years of experiences and wisdom?  Why don’t we count those things?

When I look at my friends I see a laundry list of admirable qualities.  I see compassion.  I see humor.  I see incredible style.  I see self-deprecation.  I see bravery.  I see shiny, bouncy hair.  I see loyalty.  I see gratitude.  I see money management skills.  I see intellect.  And I see abounding generosity.  But I’m not entirely sure that my friends see these things in themselves.

My first post of 2011 listed my resolutions for the year; things I want to change.  But having thought through it a bit further I think it’s also important to acknowledge the things I’d never change about myself.   I suppose I should follow my own rules, though, so here goes.

Things I would never change about myself:

My love of reading.  My culinary skills.  My commitment to healthy eating and regular exercise.  My upturned nose and sea of freckles.  My confidence.  My inquisitive mind.  And my patience as a mother.

There is a lot about me that I could do better.  But there are quite a few things that are pretty good already.  It’s good to remember that.   I should probably make this list more than once a year.  So should you!

Okay, yout turn.  Don’t leave me hanging.  I think we could all benefit from acknowledging our best traits.  So chime in!

One year ago I launched this blog with a set of resolutions for 2010.  But I did so with a fair amount of equivocation.  Amidst other objections I pointed out that I found New Year’s resolutions off-putting because they ask us to define ourselves as a set of faults, and I stand by that.  But I moved forward with my resolutions nonetheless.  And today, one year later, I’m so glad that I did.

By some stroke of either genius or dumb luck last year’s resolutions were not binary.  I asked quite a bit of myself, but none of my goals was set in a way that facilitated pure success or failure.  Rather, they were phrased in shades of grey.  They were a framework for changes I wanted to make in myself, but they were not rigid or binding.  And it was that freedom to allow smaller measures of success that enabled me to fare better with my resolutions than I ever would have expected.

2010 was not a year of major milestones for me.  In 2004 I got married.  In 2005 we bought our first house.  In 2007 I finished my MBA.  In 2008 I had my first child.  In 2009 I started a new job.  But last year was not a year of significant events.  Yet I think I accomplished more in 2010 than I have in years.  I changed a lot last year.  Some of those changes were carefully cultivated.  Others were wholly unexpected but yet no less important.  And although it strikes me as strange, I attribute these changes and accomplishments to those resolutions and to this blog.  There is something compelling about making your goals public.  There is something compelling about eschewing your fear of failure.  There is something compelling about this particular brand of accountability wherein merely by posting my aspirations in this forum I felt, throughout the year, more committed to them than any other goal I’ve pursued in the past.

In fact, I started a running list of potential 2011 resolutions several months ago, adding new entries as they dawned on me.  Even amidst the satisfaction of 2010′s successes, I found myself eager to cross the threshold into 2011 and a new set of challenges.  In 2010 I took control of my life in completely new ways and it was, quite simply, empowering.  So it is not surprising to me that I am finding exhilleration in my goals for 2011.  I do not know if it is realistic to hope for comparable success in the coming year as I achieved in the past year.  But I know that taking such risks served me well in 2010.  So I find no reason to change my tack now.  With that, my goals for 2011 are:

1. Read literary classics that I’ve never read before (there will be a dedicated post on this one at some point).
2. Regularly carry and use reusable grocery bags.
3. Don’t waste food.
4. Choose at least one initiative from The Happiness Project for implementation in my own life.
5. Brush my dogs more often.
6. Deepen existing friendships.
7. Send actual birthday cards in the actual mail and do it on time.
8. Get our family photo albums properly archived and up to date and keep current with them.
9. Grow an herb garden.

As I read back over my list, what I love most about it is that I can’t foretell the ways in which the pursuit and realization of these goals will enrich my life.  Last year I had a goal of meeting people who would challenge my perceptions of the world.  I had no idea that some of those people would weigh less than five pounds.  I had a goal of traveling to new places, and those new places turned out to be completely different than the ones I expected to visit.  I had a goal of reading more nonfiction and I had no idea that the entire year would become a dedicated literary project.

My resolutions were stated at the beginning of 2010.  But they evolved organically throughout the year and came to mean more to me by year’s end than I ever intended at the outset.  I can only hope that my new set of resolutions will come to mean as much.  But I do hope.  I hope that through my care and feeding of them, I will find that they feed and care for me in kind.

Here’s to 2011 and all the goodness that it may bring each of us this year!

Fitting that it’s Wednesday, because at the moment I am fixated on getting over the hump.  By the calendar I cleared the halfway point of 2010 on July 1.  But, even with little more than two weeks left in the year, right now I feel awfully far away from a downhill slide to January. 

I come to this post feeling frazzled and lackluster.  I need to be professionally astute.  I need to resume my regular workouts which have gone on hiatus the past couple of weeks.  I need to find my motivation to finish out the holiday season as I pledged to do – with spirit and pleasure and joy. 

And yet, I am pining for December 23^rd, when we will drive to my in-laws’ house where I will curl up into a ball for three days.  I will fall asleep on sofas and my mother-in-law will drape me with blankets.  I will roll around on thick carpet with IEP and play with nieces and nephews and toys.  I will gab with my sisters-in-law for hours.  And I will shower only when absolutely necessary.    

But December 23^rd is still more than a week away.  And in the interim I must purchase and wrap gifts.  I must defend a professional opinion to my superiors.  I must finish a book I started more than a month ago.  I must complete a few personal projects to which I’m committed.  And I must not let it all get me down. 

Last night I slogged through my workout.  My feet were heavy against the treadmill.  I collapsed from my planks after less than a minute.  My arm muscles twitched with each curl and each shoulder press.  And when it was over I felt both defeated and triumphant.  It wasn’t pretty, but it was done.  And in some strange way it energized me to tackle these things that hang over my head. 

I am eager for January.  I am eager for a fresh start.  For the burst of energy that follows two short weeks in the office.  For the adrenaline rush of a new list of resolutions.  For a year about which I have high hopes.

I am eager to get over this hump.

I have long struggled with the difference between “secret” and “private.”  As a kid it was ingrained in me that if I there was anything in my life that I couldn’t share with my parents, then it was probably something I shouldn’t be involved in.  Nothing in my life should be secret.  Period.  It took me until I was out of college to arrive at a place where I was comfortable having components of my life that were private; where I didn’t assume that keeping things private was some sort of acknowledgement of impropriety. 

Nevertheless, as an “open book” kind of person, even with that level of comfort achieved, there was not much about my life that I wasn’t willing to discuss in casual conversation with just about anyone.  That held true until January 1^st of this year.  That was the day I launched this blog.  I publicized it to friends and family, but – very intentionally – not to any of my coworkers. 

I kept it a secret.  At least that was how it felt.

Then last Thursday, after weeks of equivocation, I spilled my secret.  I am working with my sister-in-law/blog designer to make a few updates to this site.  We have come up with some new graphics and I was interested in an outside perspective, so I very quietly asked the graphic designer at work to stop by my office when he had a few minutes.

I was shy.  I was a sheepish.  I was unsure of myself and felt awkward about the whole thing.  My colleague, on the other hand, was unfazed by my embarrassment.  He offered his candid feedback, which was insightful and helpful in a variety of ways.  Then when I began to apologize for myself and my concerns about keeping my “secret” he countered.  

“It’s not a secret,” he said.

“But no one else in the office knows about it,” I responded.

“That doesn’t mean it’s a secret.  It’s a private passion.  Artists have private passions all the time,” he said.

“I guess I don’t think of myself as an artist.”

“Well maybe you should.”

And that was where the conversation left me without a response.  Maybe I should.  Maybe I should think of myself as an artist.  Maybe I should broaden the list of descriptions that I typically apply to myself.  Maybe wife, mother, and marketing professional do not adequately encompass the full scope of Gale. 

As I have thought further about this conversation I’m still not sure that “artist” is the right word to describe me.  But I like the idea that there are more words to describe me than I have perhaps previously acknowledged.  And I wonder how my existing list of descriptors has limited me up to this point.  How many times have I made a decision not to do something with the subconscious refrain of “Well, I’m not a(n) X” running through my mind?  How many more things might I have tried?  How much more freedom might I have given myself?

When I look in the mirror I see a wife, a working mother, a sister, and a friend.  But do I see an artist?  Do I see a writer?  Do I see a humanitarian?  Do I see a risk taker?  Do I see someone who is brave?  If the answer to those questions is No, it surely influences the way I live my life.  But to what avail? 

I like the idea that I may live a more interesting version of my life if I open the door to a broader range of identities.  I like the idea that I can be (or perhaps already am) something I never imagined.

I think for most people a NICU would be a very unsettling place.  I know that was true for me the first time I went into one.  However, over time, it has become a very comfortable place to be for me. 

Every Sunday afternoon I walk into the NICU at the children’s hospital where I volunteer and I feel perfectly at home.  I know many of the nurses by name.  And most of the babies are familiar to me as well since most of them remain patients for weeks and even months.  I walk through the ward tending to babies who are crying.  I hold them and rock them.  I put pacifiers back in mouths.  I notify nurses when feeding tubes have emptied or diapers need changing.  And during some shifts I may hold the same baby for three straight hours.  There are days when it is really very peaceful.

Lately, though, the NICU census is down and there just aren’t as many babies on the floor.  Additionally, most of the babies who are admitted right now are pretty well behaved.  This is generally a good thing.  But it can make for a slow volunteer shift.  So, on days like these I try to make myself useful elsewhere.  As regular readers of this blog will already know, I am a fan of being thrown out of my comfort zone every now and then, and yesterday’s shift was a classic example.

I ended up in the Progressive Care Unit, which means inpatient kids, but not intensive care kids.  After delivering a baby doll to flushed and overwhelmed two-year-old in the PICU, I met Emily* in Progressive Care, who was just finishing up her lunch.  The playroom for inpatients was about to open, Emily’s mother was dog tired, and Emily was quite geared up for some playtime.  So off we went.

Emily could not have been more different from my typical tightly swaddled charges.  She is seven years old.  She is missing her two front teeth.  She is bouncy and eager and talkative.  This volunteer shift was not going to be spent curled up in a rocking chair in a dimly lit room holding four or five pounds of newborn sweetness.    

And so we played.  We played kitchen, wherein she made me scrambled eggs and we split a soda.  We played Jenga.  We played baseball, which she declared boring after a few catches and requested to play basketball.  Then we played basketball for quite a while – she shot, I rebounded – until that too was declared boring.  We played with toys, puzzles, dolls, Wrestle Mania action figures, plastic animals, dress-up paper dolls, board games, and one last round of basketball again just as the room was closing. 

My time with Emily was at one time draining and fulfilling.  At the end of two hours I was fully exhausted, but also swollen with inspiration.  Had it not been for the giant IV pole and hospital-issue pajamas, she could have been any kid on any playground.  And her thirst for activity and play outweighed any physical limitations.  With about half an hour left before the playroom’s closing time she rubbed her eyes.

“Are you tired?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“We don’t have to keep playing if you’d rather go back to your room.”

“No.  I want to play.”

And she did.  For the next 30 minutes we continued to jump from one activity to the next.  Her energy began to flag, but not her perky disposition.  This tiny little peanut of a girl, self-assured and ready to roll (even with a stranger she’d never met), snowed me with her outlook and her stamina.

I don’t know why she’s in the hospital.**  I don’t know what the two IV lines going into her chest were for.  I don’t know if she’s bothered by all the scar tissue on her arms from many previous IVs.  I didn’t know whether it was true when another little girl in the playroom looked at Emily and loudly said to her mother, “She has a big pole with lots of medicine.  That means she’s really sick.”  (I quickly redirected Emily back to our dollhouse activities so she wouldn’t have time to digest this statement.) 

What I do know is that she is happy and confident and fun.  I know that we were the last ones to leave the playroom and that she wanted to make sure to get a board game for the road.  I know that she didn’t allow her medical condition (or the equipment that goes with it) prevent her from squeezing every last moment of fun out of her two-hour playtime.  And I suspect that she similarly does not allow her illness to stop her from squeezing all she wants out of life in general. 

I know that when I grow up I’d like to be as much like Emily as I possibly can. 

*not her real name
**HIPAA prevents volunteers from asking patients any personal information, including their conditions

This is a tricky time of year when it comes to the word “meaningful.”  For many of us, Thanksgiving serves as the gateway holiday into a six-week period of major ambivalence.  We think Rockwellian thoughts of hearth, home, and family.  And yet we run down our metaphorical batteries with errands and obligations that make us anything but happy.  We have idealized visions of what this time of year should be, but somehow our very attempts to realize those visions dismantle them, one ironic piece at a time. 

What is it about the pursuit of “what really matters” that causes us to sacrifice everything that really matters?  Why, in the name of family and togetherness, do we spend most of December fighting traffic in mall parking lots?  Why, in the name of homemade baked goods, do I sacrifice multiple leisurely evenings with my husband?  Why are we so prone to let the holiday season – which is marketed with rosy cheeks and roaring fires – turn into stress and drudgery?

As we sit down to make our list of New Year’s resolutions at some point during the upcoming month we inevitably take stock of ourselves – strengths and weaknesses alike – and earmark for improvement those things we wish were different.  And while I am a believer in this exercise, I think the timing is a bit inopportune.  On the one hand it allows us to indulge in the holiday season’s guilty pleasures with reckless abandon.  But on the other hand it also enables us to adopt the mindset of “just getting through” the holidays and thereby let them devolve into an empty shell of their actual purpose and potential. 

This year I’ve found myself with a rare and unexpected gift – some extra time.  Every December since we were married, GAP and I have thrown a Christmas party.  It has traditionally been the Saturday after GAP’s company party, and usually ends up being the week before Christmas.  But this year everything is shifted up a week, leaving me two full weeks before Christmas but after our party circuit winds down.  When I realized that this was the case I was initially flustered at the short turnaround time, but ultimately embraced it when I realized that two full weeks of decidedly lower-key holiday merriment would follow.

And so, in an effort not to destroy those two weeks of quietude with the side effects of procrastination, I am making some Holiday Resolutions for myself:

1. I know what I need to get most of my recipients, and will take advantage of that fact by shopping now.
2. I will shop online as much as possible to prevent unnecessary trips into jungle-caliber malls and shopping centers.  I will consider shipping fees a reasonable price for sanity.
3. I will wrap presents as I buy them, not in one marathon session on December 23^rd.   I will not wrap late at night.  And I will not wrap without a mug of hot chocolate or glass of red wine nearby.  (I love wrapping, but it’s easy for it to become a chore if I procrastinate and don’t take any care in setting a pleasant ambiance.)
4. I will not worry about mailing holiday cards until after our party has been thrown. 
5. I will not obligate myself to cook 85 different varieties of cookies for coworkers.

As with any goal, I don’t know how successful I will be.  But experience has shown me that I’ll come much closer to my ideal by the mere act of identifying goals.  I want this Christmas season to leave me room for what really matters.

Before we get started, I want to thank all of you for your kind words and condolences in response to Monday’s post.  The loss of a horse isn’t exactly the most relatable experience in the world, and it means a great deal to me that you all offered your heartfelt support nonetheless.  Thank you so much for your virtual embrace.  It was warm and snuggly and just what I needed. 

If you could masquerade as someone else, would you do it?  If you could masquerade as a different version of yourself, would you do it?  What would it take for you to cast aside your existing notions of who you are and try on something else entirely?

I ask these questions because I recently had a conversation with a friend that traveled down this path.  My friend is single and nearing 40.  She confessed that she’d like to “have someone” when she turns 40 in a little more than a year.  This friend of mine is thoughtful, sincere, funny, and feisty.  I’ve long been amazed that some clever suitor didn’t snatch her up a long time ago.  But as we got to talking about it she confessed that she’s not good at meeting new people.  My friend, whom I’ve always found to be charming and outgoing, has a shy streak.

Interestingly, her shy streak develops a shy streak of its own when she travels.  She could strike up a conversation with anyone in a hotel bar, and easily chat over two or three drinks.  In these situations she knows she’ll never see her new friend again and abandons all traces of self-consciousness.  I asked her why she can’t behave the same way at home and she replied that she’s too worried that she’ll do or say something foolish and it will come back to haunt her (despite the fact that she lives in a huge city).

So I challenged her.  “What if you entered into a trial period?  What if you became your ‘travel self’ for a period of, say, 30 days?  Be as confident and unself-conscious as you would if you were in some other city and see what happens.  The measure of success isn’t whether or not you meet someone, but whether or not you regret having taken on this persona in your home town.”

As we talked more about it I wondered in what other ways this trial period could be applied.  Sure, it has limitations.  Someone who is inherently a class clown probably won’t turn into a wallflower, or vice versa.  But if there are aspects of ourselves that already exist, but lurk beneath the surface and need nurturing to really bloom, could we bring them out into the forefront of our personalities with a little nudging?  I say yes.  With a little honesty and a little gumption I think we can each find things we’d like to change about ourselves, but haven’t.

I’ll go first:  I want to be a person who goes shopping without an insurmountable magnetic pull toward cableknit sweaters.  I want to accesorize more boldly.  And I want to not worry about every purchase I make being “timeless.”  There are obviously more substantive changes you could make, but this is where I’m starting. 

So whom do you want to be?  What do you wish were different about yourself?  And would you be willing to try that person on for a month?  At the end of 30 days you could decide if this new version of yourself should stay or go.  In the meantime, you get to add a little adventure to your life.  Who’s in?

According to the brief description following his byline, Thomas Moore (not the poet or the saint), “has been a monk, a musician, a professor, a psychotherapist, an author, and a lecturer.”  My initial response to that mini-bio is to think, “Wow, someone couldn’t make up his mind, could he?”  But that is tacky and judgmental and wholly irrelevant in this case because in this article he makes some very interesting points.

How many new electronic gadgets have you purchased in the past five years?  How many pieces of artwork have you acquired during that same time?  I realize the second question feels like a non sequitur to the first.  But Moore poses this question because he believes that the latter in some way counterbalances the first; like a cultural carbon offset.  He likens technological additions to our lives to coolness – with every Kindle, iPad, or Droid we become cooler.  The problem with this, he asserts, is that we should also add things to our lives that make us warmer.  The things that Moore proposes make us warmer?  Non-technological things: artwork, music, books, and the like.    

There’s something appealing about this idea to me; the idea that as things in life make us cooler (metaphorically speaking, of course) that we should take steps to make ourselves warmer.  We should not be allowed to evolve into mechanized versions of ourselves, engaging with the world and with each other only through objects with on/off switches.  Moore writes, ”There’s nothing wrong with cool… But if cool gets in the way of warm, we individuals and the culture at large lose important values: connection, empathy, nostalgia, a strong sense of home and civility.” 

This was where I really got on board.  Connection, empathy, nostalgia, home, and civility are words that resonate with me.  If those words are a part of my life then I’m probably doing something right.  Right?  At the end of a day, or even moreso at the end of a life, these are the components of our lives that matter the most.  These are the barometers of a life well lived.

The other aspect of Moore’s cooler/warmer premise that I like is that as he explains it our coolness and warmth are not mutually exclusive.  He does not ask us to eradicate our coolness; to recycle our iPhones or Tivos and return to the existence of a pre-Alexander Graham Bell time.  He allows us our gadgets, but merely asks that as we accumulate them we even ourselves with other additions to our lives that balance them out. 

I’m not a huge gadget junkie.  And I think I probably rank higher on the warm scale than the cool scale most days.  But Moore’s ideas ring true to me, and as I add new technological gear to my life I should work to make sure that the warmer things in my life are not subsumed by the cool.

I was walking to my company’s IT help desk on Monday and as I made my way through a sea of cubicles something popped out at me.  A printed version of the poster below was taped to someone’s file cabinet, and it made me smile. 

I love the idea of a bird with a French fry.  I love the idea that upon finding such deep fried goodness a little robin or sparrow thinks he has struck gold.  He is not stuck with acorns or pinecones or even birdseed.  He has a French fry, and that is a happy occasion for a bird, to be sure. 

I also love the implicit concept of choice in this funky little mantra.  This kind of happiness is not reserved for birds with French fries.  It can be mine too, but only if I choose it.

I am surrounded by first-world problems: I have a BlackBerry and I want an iPhone.  I’m not sure I love the hair color that my stylist and I picked out last weekend.  I haven’t had the time to make dinner reservations for our vacation to Washington, DC later this fall.  And so on.  Woe is me, right?

Sayings like this one about the bird and the French fry cut straight to the heart of the matter for me.  Somehow the silliness of it casts a bright light on the lunacy of my discontent.  I am healthy and I have a job.  I have a solid marriage and good relationships with my family.  I have a lovely home and the means to travel.  I have satisfying friendships, hobbies, and interests.  And I have a son more perfect than I ever could have imagined.  Truly, I want for nothing.

And yet I (we all) find things to lament.  Little things.  Meaningless things.  I have problems that millions of other people would kill to have. 

I’m not a big complainer.  And I don’t believe that I should stifle my every frustration just because someone else in this world is in worse shape than I.  But I have a choice.  Every day that I wake up I can choose to be as happy as a bird with a French fry.  And I think that frame of mind sounds like a delightful way to spend a day.

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This poster was created by Etsy artisan “dazeychic” and is available for purchase here.

When I was a college freshman there was a frozen yogurt machine in our dining hall.  My sorority pledge sisters and I loaded up our waffle cones before heading back to our dorm rooms each night with nary a thought of the number of calories we held in our hands (probably more than 500).  Frozen yogurt, you see, is low fat.   (Are you laughing at that logic?  Because I am.) 

As you might have guessed, this is the story of the Freshman 15.

Yesterday morning NPR aired this story about freshman weight gain.  It discusses how and why 18-year-olds living quasi-independently for the first time in their lives are prone to adding extra pounds.  (Umm, free food, cheap beer, no supervision, and living in a 24/7 co-ed slumber party – who wouldn’t gain weight?)  The reasons provided by the sources interviewed are all very observant and very predictable – new freedoms, lots of stress, and easy access to junk food.  Is this healthy?  No.  Is it an important component of the undergraduate experience?  I’m inclined to say yes. 

That’s right.  I’m about to advocate for the Freshman 15.  Buckle up.

Let’s dispense with formalities first.  Clearly I don’t believe that sleep deprivation paired with a diet of pizza, Coke, Reese’s Pieces, and gummy bears is healthy.  So don’t be mistaken about that.  What I wonder, though, is whether the merits of such a lifestyle (for a finite period of time) outweigh the costs?  I will explain.

As an undergraduate I believe you have two primary sets of responsibilities.  The first is academic: Show up for class.  Choose a major.   Study for tests and write term papers.  Make decent grades.  Prepare yourself for some kind of career.  The second is cultural: Meet new people.  Learn how to live life unchaperoned.  Deal with consequences on your own.  Dip your toes into the waters of adulthood.  Make incredible memories that cannot be made during any other phase of life. 

It is that last imperative that I think is compromised by a college career marked by bedtimes and balanced meals.  And I come to this conclusion via personal experience. 

Throughout college I was, for the most part, the consummate good girl.  I made it to the dining hall for breakfast every day.  I exercised at least three times per week.  I didn’t skip class.  I drank in moderation.  And I was in bed by 10:30 most weeknights.  I had my vices (Sonic and procrastination being foremost among them – it was a life on the edge, to be sure), and I actually did have a tremendous amount of fun.  But I look back on my college career wondering what raucous misadventures and side-splitting belly laughs I might have added to my collection of memories if I’d been willing to stay up past midnight.  I wonder to what extent my friends and peers would have found me more relatable if I’d indulged in some late-night munchies and shared in their 10am exhaustion the next day.  I wonder how much I segregated myself from the quintessential college experience by making good choices day after day.

The ramifications of four years filled with pizza, sugar, alcohol, and very little sleep can be remedied.  The experience that was lost by spending those years acting as a tiny adult rather than an overgrown adolescent can never be retrieved.  I don’t regret that I never took up smoking.  I don’t regret that I never drove drunk.  I don’t regret that I never failed a class.  But I do regret that I was so wrapped up in making prudent, responsible decisions that I self-selected out of some of college’s best experiences.

The NPR piece follows a George Washington University freshman named Katie O’Toole.  O’Toole and her roommate have not succumbed to freshman weight gain.  They are sticking with the healthy habits they learned at home – breakfast, exercise, time management, etc.  But the story’s reporter observed that students who choose this path tend to band together because they are such a small minority.

I’d like to talk to Katie O’Toole.  I’d like to tell her that she doesn’t need to make the “right” decision every time.  A few late night visits from the Domino’s delivery guy aren’t going to derail her.  They might actually endear her to dorm-mates who have trouble relating to her good-girl agenda.  And by endearing herself to people who aren’t just like her, she might broaden herself a bit.  She might be involved in some late-night follies.  Sure, she might gain a few pounds.   She also might laugh until she cries.  But she can run an extra mile tomorrow.  And the memories will last forever.