New Year’s resolutions? Please. Nobody keeps those.

“I’ll probably break mine in a minute,” Southwest Junior High School seventh-grader James Kenney said.

What if you record it for posterity?

“I don’t think a lot of people will remember by July,” said Kayla Caple, Tonganoxie High School sophomore.

Members of the Journal-World’s Angle, a student advisory board, met last week to discuss New Year’s resolutions and record their own. However, this group, though young, was anything but idealistic. Many of the students, who are in sixth through 12th grades at area schools, admitted they probably wouldn’t stick to the resolutions once they walked out the door.

“Why bother making up a resolution?” they asked. “And what does it have to do with the new year, anyway?”

Chelsea Lund, a Eudora High School freshman, said making and keeping a promise to oneself could boost confidence by exercising willpower.

“You have a sense of self-control if you keep it,” she said.

Victoria Gilman, an eighth-grader at West Junior High School, said she thought the occasion people used to start their resolutions was incidental.

“I think New Year’s is mainly an excuse,” she said. “It’s an excuse to start new.”

Capitalizing on that excuse, Angle members did come up with some well-intentioned and thoughtful resolutions. They vowed to practice the saxophone more, walk and bike more, spend more time with friends, sleep more and do more volunteer work.

Aaryn Wertz, a Pinckney School sixth-grader, vowed to “choose the right friends for me.”

“The right friends are the best,” she said.

Allison Morte, a seventh-grader at Southwest, wanted to be more responsible by returning her library books on time. Olivia Taylor-Puckett, a McLouth sixth-grader who attends Foreign Language Academy in Kansas City, Mo., said she would try not whine about taking care of her new horse when the weather’s bad.

One student said she actually had made and kept a resolution once. Eudora High School junior Sasha Lund said a few years ago, she decided to drink more water, and she still drinks several glasses each day.

Lawrence youths in Angle, the Journal-World's teen advisory board, discuss New Year's resolutions while Angle adviser Dean Royal records the conversation for a podcast.

But even with a success story, Sasha suggested people make “buffer” resolutions – things they would have done anyway – and when they do those, they’ll be able to check it off the list.

Molly-Ann Wells, a Tonganoxie freshman, agreed with Sasha and summed up the general attitude of her peers toward resolutions: “It’s good to aim low. Then you have a bigger feeling of accomplishment.”

Such cynicism. And at such a young age.

Then again, maybe age was the reason few students felt they needed resolutions – they don’t appear to be a must-have among teens. Aaryn said not everyone has resolutions, so “you don’t have to have one.”

A cell phone, on the other hand, or an iPod would be a whole different story.

– Katie Kritikos, a Journal-World copy editor, is an Angle adviser.