Set an Academic Goal by Prof Bert Lorenzo

A new academic year lends to many opportunities including the setting of a goal.  The process of goal setting, not just the reaching of a goal, can pay high dividends.  The process of goal setting can help you, especially first year students, find a direction in which to take your education and learning.

     Where do you want your education to take you?  What do you want from your college degree or do you just simply want a degree?  Does it matter to you what the degree includes?  Because we should learn throughout our lives a goal should extend beyond formal education.  An academic goal should be about the learning that helps fashion a life not just the learning required to earn a degree.

     Without a reason for learning other than the minimum required of our formal education it makes it very difficult if not impossible to develop the habits to live a life of the mind so having a goal motivates us to develop said habits.  By academic I mean learning of all kinds, especially outside of the classroom so it includes informal as well as formal learning.  Everything I read, listen to, watch, experience is academic and a principle part of what makes me me.

     Since an academic goal should extend beyond our formal education years the more grandiose you set it the better.  Make it so grandiose that perhaps you can’t reach it.  Remember it’s the process of setting the goal and the effort in reaching it that matters not the actual achievement but also remember that if you want to achieve your goal the first and most important step in the process is writing it down.  By definition you must, not should, but must write it down.  If not, not only is it not a goal but you will never reach it.  Writing it down will help you see your goal more clearly.

     Write out in no more than two simple, short sentences your goal.  Don’t worry if your goal evolves as you and your life change.  You can always edit, update and rewrite your goal.  Also write the process of your goal.  How will you reach it?  What do you need to learn?  With the help of technology you can add pictures of what your goal looks like or how it will look when you reach it.  I set my academic goal in tenth grade but not until I wrote it down many years later did I truly begin the process of achieving it and till this day, 35 years later, I’m still in the process.

     You have an opportunity today to make a change in your life.  I know you want to change because that’s what education is about.  Learning changes us and change starts with setting an academic goal and with writing it down.

Copyright Bert Lorenzo, 2014