Teachers spend roughly seven hours of their day teaching, in addition to grading assignments and spending time with their families.  This does not leave a lot of free time. However, one Xavier teacher decided to make time to begin his New Year resolution: to watch more movies.

Señor Alexis Avila made his 2018 New Year’s resolution after deciding he wanted an exciting and different goal.

“I didn’t get the idea from anyone or any place, just something that came to mind. I wanted a ‘fun’ New Year’s goal, but little did I know it was going to be difficult to keep up with,” Avila said.

He chose this goal because he did not watch many movies growing up and could not relate to his friends’ knowledge of movies.

“When I hang out with friends, they talk about movies and many times I don’t know what they’re talking about, so I keep a running list of those to watch,” Avila said.

Avila’s original goal was to watch one movie a night, but soon he realized how much time one movie every night would take away from his other responsibilities. Avila decided to set a more reasonable goal of watching two movies a week in order to expand his knowledge and appreciation of movies.

“Before starting, one of my favorite movies was Space Jam. I still wasn’t in kindergarten when I first watched it, but that scene where R. Kelly’s song, “I Believe I Could Fly,” starts playing still sticks with me to this day,” Avila said.

Throughout this process he has continued to take different movie suggestions from students and friends, which has lead to a growing list in his classroom.

“I told Sr. Avila to watch The Blind Side because it’s inspirational and overall a really good movie,” junior Mitchell Willey said.

As the year progresses, Avila hopes to watch 112 movies and is still open to movie suggestions.

Claire Delaney

A&E Assistant Editor