Are there any good New Year’s resolutions that I can actually stick to?

A strong mind wouldn’t ask this question. A strong mind could stick to any and all of the New Year’s resolutions that you make. But, since I am typing the answer to this question alternating between clutching slices of moulding Boxing Day cheesecake and a half-smoked cigarette in my non-typing hand, Bridget Jones style, I give up the pretence that a strong mind is something I’ve ever been in possession of. I suppose that to actually succeed in your goals, you probably need to be motivated by something much more powerful than mere pride or desire.

A sound example of this is spite. Why slog repeatedly through the tedium of an exercise regimen to “feel better” and “live longer” when you can actually improve your fitness as a means of tracking down your enemies, eliminating them one by one? Why give up drinking to “heal your liver” and “not wake up with no memory of who the hell you are or how you’re still alive in a different county on a Thursday morning”, when your higher calling is actually to stash away money spent on booze for caffeine pills and four-packs of Monster Ultra before exam term hits, so you can top tripos and reap that sweet, sweet academic validation I know you’re salivating over (remember kids, think smarter, not harder – or, preferably, circumvent the need to do any proper thinking altogether).

“To actually succeed in your goals, you probably need to be motivated by something powerful than mere pride”

You could, in theory, swear off Wednesday Revs for a term or so, but if you didn’t have the common sense to do this in the sweaty afterglow of Freshers’ Week then I’m afraid there’s little hope for you now. Your best bet is to throw all your hopes and ambitions for the coming year into an abyss of laziness and self-hatred like the rest of us with a deathly fear of failure did oh so long ago. Who knows – wallowing down here in the depths of human indolence you might actually find a comrade exasperating enough to awaken the bitter resentment that holds the key to your success!

In the two years or so I’ve spent at university, I’ve never paid my TV licence. Yet, to my horror, on my return to Cambridge after the winter break, I discovered a threatening letter from the licensing authority lurking in my pidge. Do I give up the game or refuse to go down without a fight?

I personally feel like the whole TV licence gimmick is one of those laws that never truly feels real, because the consequences of violating it are seldom witnessed – a bit like lobbing a drinks pitcher at your high school nemesis’s head in your hometown “nightclub” out of nothing but sheer unadulterated boredom and a severe hatred of everything that reminds you of Year 10, or pirating movies on less-than-legal websites in the back of another faculty’s library. (Legal disclaimer: Your dear aunt, of course, has never engaged in such degenerate behaviour. I would never dare set foot in any of the other stinky faculty libraries. Have you ever tried vaping in the law fac? Didn’t think so. It’s like 1984 in there.)

Still, if you do get caught out, it’s a pretty sticky situation. Can you really picture yourself as the wet wipe who, when asked what they’re in for, primary school show-and-tell style, has to confess that they’re in the slammer for serial television licence evasion? Nobody wants to make a name for themselves as the idiot who couldn’t wait until after graduation before engaging in white-collar crime. You’re telling me your average current econ or mathmo isn’t going to go on to commit some sort of abominable financial transgression within the next ten years? If they can wait, then I promise, so can you. With any luck, by then the government will have fulfilled their ultimate wet dream of axing funding to public services altogether (take that, liberals!), and with law enforcement languishing in the underfunded gutter, you’ll be off scot-free.