By Joel Anderson

Ellen Goodman, the renown, beloved, often not-loved-at-all Washington Post columnist, published her final newspaper work on the first day of 2010. She's off to retirement and not looking back.

Goodman once wrote about every exit being an entry. We can claim many calendar dates in a year to be the start of something new, a different or better way of behaving, the beginning of a re-fired effort to accomplish worthwhile goals.

January 1 is the traditional date of such resolutions. American commerce is all over it with help for losing weight, quitting tobacco and, new to those standard personal self-promises for the New Year, finding romance by Internet dating. There's money to be made in this resolution business. There wouldn't be if some of the products and suggestions didn't work for people. But for some, maybe most, January 2nd can dawn with the entry still un-entered.

That's okay. Then today can be your day. One-two or one-two-ten or 1/2, sound like or read like a date easy to remember. You'll want to recall the date you quit smoking or began a diet, your anniversary of personal triumph. And if you get thrown from the resolution pony? That's okay, too. Saddle-up again, make a new plan, keep moving forward, no looking back.

Many resolutions are different. They're more ethereal like being a better person or being more involved or working harder. There's no product you can buy to make these promises come true. It's between you and you. We exit where we were dissatisfied and take the entry to a new place, a different way to be and behave, a place to be satisfied. Yeah, that pony can buck you here, too, but it doesn't cost to get back up again.

January 19 might be a date to resolve to make some changes since it's the first day of spring semester. You might decide to be a more present and prepared student or teacher. You might decide to be more involved in campus opportunities, activities and organizations. You might decide to treat college education like it should be-- four or five years of exploration and consideration that begins and ends. It's what you do in the middle that makes it worth your money.

Ellen Goodman is pleased her final column was published in the January 1 newspaper. She didn't see it as the exit to her job, but the first words of the next stage of her life. "It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving on rather than out."

Yeah, we're moving on. We have exited fall semester, 2009. Done with it, good or not so. As with any new day, we can resolve to do better, to be better next semester, to have a 'sense of future'. If it didn't quite happen on New Year's Day, it's gone now, but tomorrow is almost here and January 19th is dead ahead.
 


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