It’s halfway through the school year, finals have passed, and grades have been sent. Staring at our report cards, sighing, we think, “Well, I’ll try harder next semester.” We reflect on the actions and decisions we made that may have caused this “shocking” result. Whether it’s not paying attention in class, arguing with your teacher too much, or not doing homework. We finally motivate ourselves by keeping the mindset that last semester was a bust and we will start the next semester anew. “I’ll try harder next time — I promise.”

“Next Semester. Next time. Later. I will. I’ll try. I’ll do. I promise.”

New semester, new me, right? Well, that’s a great idea and motivation and all, but why wait? Why must we wait to work hard? Why must we wait to do our best in school? Why do we wait to fail in order to succeed? We wait until we receive the results that we knew we were getting. But why wait?

We constantly try to start fresh, right? And it’s never too late to start. However, when we have to pick up the slack and retake the classes that we could’ve worked harder in — it seems a little late. We increase our workload to fix the things that we messed up on, rather than consistently working hard.

As a student, I’ve acknowledged the fact that everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses, especially in school. There are times, when our weaknesses hit us in the face and we just stop;we give up. I will admit, I have done this too. I slack off first semester and suddenly second semester I try harder, all because my last report card wasn’t as good as I expected it to be. I gave up too. However, I realized I shouldn’t be waiting. I shouldn’t wait for my parents to scold me or to feel the disappointment in slacking off.

Since it’s a new semester, there’s only so much we could do. We can’t go back and change whatever we did last semester. So all we could think of is just doing our best for this new semester. It may help that we get to start afresh and forget about last semester. Trying harder for the new semester may be a great motivational tactic, but what about the next year? When the new school year rolls over and the first semester of the new year comes in, what will happen then? Nothing. Because everyone is waiting for the next semester to try.