Five valuable lessons you should take from 2016

We could say it’s been a tough year, or we could let this tweet sum it up more perfectly than we could ever put into words.

me at the beginning of 2016 vs me at the end of 2016 pic.twitter.com/ijmJQhTyvR

— keely flaherty (@flahertykeely) December 8, 2016

Somehow, both our personal lives and the wider world got obliterated by 2016. What the hell happened? We feel like we’ve been punished for some terrible wrong-doings of 2015. Most of you will probs agree that this year’s semesters have been the hardest they’ve been our whole degree, and even though we’re a little older and a little wiser, we came of 2016 so much poorer. If we don’t want the same fate for 2017, here’s the lessons we should learn from the year that passed.

Always take voting seriously

Although voting is compulsory in Australia, it doesn’t mean everyone takes it as seriously as they should. If we’re going to take anything from the disaster outcomes of Brexit and the US election, it’s to never throw your vote away with a donkey vote. Hopefully we have no contenders for PM that resemble Trump in any way – but on a lesser scale, it’s still so so important to look into who you’re voting for, even if you’re not that into politics.

Don’t set a New Year’s resolution if you didn’t stick to last years

Or the year before that… Hands up if you try to set a New Year’s resolution every year that you fail to live up to? If this is you, don’t make one this year. That doesn’t mean you should give up all hopes, dreams and aspirations for a baller 2017. It just means you should make smaller goals throughout the year which are much easier to stick to. If you make one big grand plan on January 1, you’ll probably forget about it (particularly after all those NYE drinks).

Stop eating avo on toast

If we’ve learned anything from this year, it’s that we all don’t own homes and can’t afford a mortgage because we’re just brunching our savings away on smashed avocado. Thanks Bernald Salt, you’ve really saved us there. Next year, the market will be blowing up with way more millennials putting deposits on houses thanks to your sage advice.

Learn from your own mistakes

If 2016 got the better of you, there’s always 2017 to turn it around. If you didn’t get that grad job you wanted or you failed a subject – learn from your mistakes so you don’t get unlucky with the same fate next year. Find out what you did wrong and improve on that so next year you can get that HD or a brand spankin’ new job.

Anything can happen in 2017…

We mean anything. Just because 2016 was all doom and gloom, doesn’t mean next year won’t be exciting. Think of all the things that happened this year you would have never expected – Netflix added offline downloads, so who knows what other wonderful things will help us in 2017 (even if that helps us be lazier). Think of all the personal lessons you learned as well, and hopefully they will also contribute to a better 2017.