Creating promises to fulfill in the New Year is a tradition that has been firmly cemented in our culture over the years. These New Year’s Resolutions are not always completed to the extent that was intended, but that only makes accomplishing the goals even more significant. Resolutions for the New Year can have a miraculous impact on people, so why wouldn’t the same principle apply to our school?

The vast majority of New Year’s resolutions are created to solve one or more problems that could be detrimental if not remedied. The most prominent of Tewksbury Memorial High School’s issues that can be prevented with a bit of effort, would be the excessive amount of vandalism that is present on school grounds, as well as the myriad of trash that students often leave strewn across the halls. This must be treated as the foremost of the problems because not only does it affect the students and teachers, but also it causes the school’s hard working janitorial staff to face a far greater mess than they should have to tackle. It would be blatantly disrespectful to continue to force the men and women who work these thankless jobs to clean up the messes that we students collectively manufacture.

Another vital promise that we should make to ourselves must be, despite its obvious difficulty, to lighten up the amount of traffic in the hallways. It has been a problem throughout many students’ high school careers, and unless we as a community are actively working towards finally solving this flaw, the majority of us will continue to have to endure the painful struggle of trudging through the halls at a painstakingly slow pace behind dozens of kids.

Overall, TMHS did a fine job in 2016 with regards to not only maintaining our reputation as one of the most successful public schools in the Merrimack Valley, but also showing the right sense of morals in the truest way imaginable. That, however, does not exempt the school from criticism and critique in the areas that it most needs it. In short, everyone at TMHS could work a little harder in 2017 to ensure that our school can fulfill its true potential, and become the school that we all want it to be.