New Year, Same Me

     I experienced a new phenomenon this year in early January. After my brutal ten minutes’ walk from my dorm in Lakeside through the freezing wind, I arrived at the PAC, Furman University’s fitness center. Suddenly, my favorite elliptical was taken as were all the others. Sweaty people filled the treadmills and the stair-masters. Every square inch of the floor in the glass encased room was covered in purple yoga mats. I tried to find a locker for my water bottle and each was taken. Who were these people suddenly obsessed with exercise and fitness?

     Gym attendance had greatly increased from the end of last year, and I realized that these people were the product of recently made New Year’s resolutions. With each additional trip I made to the gym, I noticed a significant exponential drop in gym attendance as people began to fail their resolutions to make 2015 a healthier year.

     I personally have stopped making New Year’s resolutions by abandoning the “New Year, New Me” slogan. I am not so inclined to suppose that I have no faults and that self-improvement is not relevant to me; however, the idea of making changes just because we enter a new year is not appealing to me. The majority of America gets pulled into this cultural sensation, and yet sixty percent of New Year’s resolutions fail (Kliff, Sarah).

     New Year’s Eve is a holiday designed to reflect upon joy and heartbreak, highs and lows, accomplishments and failures, marriages and divorce, and births and deaths of the past year. We remember our laughter and our tears, long road trips and staying up to late, and too much chocolate. We think of the friendship we shared and the tragedies we watched on the news. We reminisce about our favorite moments and perhaps choose a song to represent the year. Or we remember the hours we spent crying over things that do and do not deserve our tears. Maybe we missed our flight or lost a job. Perhaps we should have told someone we loved them. And as the ball drops on New Year’s Eve, we get caught up in this sensation that somehow it all could have been better, and we think that we want to change.

     But I am under the impression that it takes more than this temporary emotional rush to mentally and physically change ourselves. And the gradual dwindling gym participation that I am currently experiencing proves it.

Bibliography:

Kliff, Sarah. "The Science of Actually Keeping Your New Year's Resolutions."Vox. Vox Media, 29 Dec. 2014. Web. 26 Jan. 2015.

Tactics of the Modern Day Polemic

Who is the polemic? Is he a radical being who feels with every part of body the burning passion of his extremist views? Is she living fire taking a stance against any opposing outlooks? Does he hate as he spits and fumes through his words? Is she a fanatic screaming from the pages the "only truth that exists"?

      
Or is the polemic more intelligent than he presents himself in his pages? I believe that real inflamed polemics exist; however, I reason that what polemics seek the most is attention and therefore, must sacrifice some of their real beliefs in order to find this. Most polemics have memorized the formula for fame and pursue this at the expense of logical and reasonable viewpoints. Why? Because polarizing arguments make people talk and make Twitter follower counts rise.

     This summer in the midst of World Cup fever, I encountered the most alarming article, “America’s Favorite National Pastime: Hating Soccer” by Ann Coulter. For me, the immense popularity that World Cup received was a personal success. I had devoted countless hours to practicing the sport since I was a child, and spent innumerable weekends at tournaments in cities all over Florida. My love of soccer was born from my father who played it in college at Vanderbilt University. In addition to him being my childhood coach, we watched Barclay's English Premier soccer games together almost every night and followed our favorite players. Needless to say, it had always bothered me when people told me that soccer was not a real sport. Suddenly, this past summer, everyone in America was cheering on our national team. I was absolutely thrilled that I could discuss the outcome of Team USA’s games with virtually anyone. And then, I discovered Ann Coulter’s article.     It was an outrage. In her article, she states, “Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay.” She goes on to explain that the nature of soccer puts no responsibility on the players to seek personal achievement, and that there are no MVPs in soccer. She continues to say that liberals are pushing soccer in America like they push the metric system because it’s European. She took the beautiful game of soccer and turned it into some twisted liberal agenda. She said that it was a game of “no heroes, no losers, no accountability” and that it was destroying the morals of America. At first, I was outraged, and I immediately discredited all her arguments in my head. She took a sport and convoluted it into some sort of demon.     In her purest form, Ann Coulter is a polemic. She is clever, and exploited World Cup fever to become a virile sensation. Her article swept the nation, causing Forbes and many other news sites to write responses to the article. Her notoriety grew as a result of this publication, and attention from critics and supporters reined in. And so I asked myself, “Does Ann Coulter really burn with hatred towards soccer, a simple sport, and believe that it is responsible for the growing moral decay in America? Or does she have the precise formula to making humans react so strongly?” Either way, people were talking about Ann Coulter, and I was one of them.

Link to her article: http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2014-06-25.html 

Bibliography:

Coulter, Ann. "AMERICA'S FAVORITE NATIONAL PASTIME: HATING SOCCER." Web log post. AMERICA'S FAVORITE NATIONAL PASTIME: HATING SOCCER. N.p., 25 June 2014. Web. 20 Jan. 2015.