A Retrospective on 2026

As we come to the end of 2025 I figured it would be a good opportunity to look back on last year’s resolutions:

• Climb three new mountains
• Complete Intermediate Climbing School (ICS)
• Start my masters in Computer Science at OSU

I completed ICS in March and started my masters program in September. I had originally planned to climb Mt. Rainier with my classmates, Mt. Adams with my brother, and a third mountain by assisting in the Introduction to Alpine Climbing course. The funny thing is that I didn’t do any of those, but I did climb 12 new mountains over the course of three days by completing the Tatoosh traverse. I’d like to climb more peaks this year, but given the unpredictability of schedules and weather I don’t think I’ll make summits a New Year’s resolution going forward.

For 2026 I have the following goals:

• Read 26 books.
• Complete 4 more classes in my major.
• Start the Mazamas Leadership Development (LD) program.

I’ve informally read 24 books for 2024 and 25 books for 2025. I figure I might as well make it a running new years resolution. I’ve been keeping track of the books read here if you want to follow along.

I completed Programming Languages for my first course at Oregon State University and will start Computer Architecture in January. The three other courses will be determined by what’s on offer in the OSU course catalogue for those three succeeding quarters.

For the LD Program I plan to pursue certification for leading “C” level climbs. This would allow me to lead climbs on almost all the mountains that I could want to, to include Mt. Olympus, Mt. Rainier, and Mt. Shasta. The LD program is actually quite involved, so I plan to make a full write-up in a subsequent post.

Overall I think my resolutions are fairly balanced in terms of ambition and feasibility, and feel relatively confident in my ability to accomplish them. What about you? What resolutions do you have for next year? Let us know in the comments.

Photo by Frank Okay on Unsplash