Many new students' attitude about college is that it is only vaguely part of their
long-term plans. To many, it's simply the thing you're supposed to do next
after completing high school. Most entering Freshman will have chosen their
major by the time class begins. While 12% of these expect to change their
major at some point, a full 65-85% actually do. In fact, many students'
expectations are far from what actually ends up happening during their
college experience. For instance, only 8% of undergrads expect to spend
more than 4 years to complete their degrees, whereas 60% end up taking more
time. Only 2% expect to fail a course; 16% actually do. And most surprising
of all, only 1% of students expect to drop out. A full 40% actually do drop
out!*
Clearly, it makes sense to take control of your education and your life. Do
not passively sit back and just expect everything to work out. The
responsibility for acquiring the education you seek rests ultimately with
no one but you. In order to make things work, you need a plan. Not only to
succeed academically, but to get the most out of your entire college
experience.
If you fall into this category of being "goal-oriented" but not "goal-obsessed," then here are a few tips to help you accomplish more without becoming a slave to the process:
The Secret: Set Goals
Do you currently have goals? Sure, everybody has some things they know
they'd like to do. But do you have REAL goals? That is, a list of 5 or 10
things that you have committed to yourself to doing? Things that you
will do, in specific terms, by a specific date? Can you list them off the
top of your head right now, as you read this?
If you said "no" to any part of the above questions, then your "goals" are
probably more like "notions" than actual goals. Everyone has notions. Just
like everyone has a notion that they won't drop out of college. Think about
that, then consider somebody who has set a specific goal "To Complete
College in Four Years." Do you think this person is more likely to stay in
school and finish it in four years than, say, the person who has never
thought that much about the question? The answer is an unqualifed "yes."
People who set goals, commit their goals to writing, and refer back
periodically are many more times more likely to actually do whatever they
want to do.
Why is this?
Life is tremendously varied. At any given moment, there are thousands of
things you could do. When you're driving, you could turn left, turn right,
speed up, slam on the brakes, stop for lunch, stop for gas, decide to drive
to Alaska to see what Kodiak bears look like, and on and on. But what is it
that keeps you from ending up in Alaska every time you get into your car?
Why don't you end up at random locations all the time? The answer is that
you got into your car with a clear idea of where you wanted to go. You knew
at the beginning.
Life is the same way. If you know at the beginning where you want to go,
you'll probably get there. If you don't, you probably won't.
Consider, for instance, all the things you could do with your free time:
You could read, eat, sleep, go for a run, go shopping, call someone, watch
television, and so on, for an infinite number of options. How to choose?
Even if you decide to spend an hour watching television, there are hundreds
of channels you could surf through, not to mention your DVD collection. Or
what about surfing the Web? Literally millions of options are just
a couple mouseclicks away. It would be easy to fetter away a lifetime if we
woke up each morning without any idea of what we where we wanted to go,
what we wanted to do, or how we were going to get there.
The human brain is very good at sifting through large amounts of
information, searching for that which is most important in a given
situation. It's also very good at answering questions that are posed to it.
However, the brain does require that someone tell it what it's looking for
or what question it's supposed to answer. In that way, it's like a powerful
computer sitting on the desk—it's a powerful tool, but somebody needs
to tell it what to do.
That's exactly what goals do. By setting goals, you're giving your brain
instructions for what it is supposed to be doing. Any time you have a
decision to make, whether big or small, it's going to take your goal into
account if you have bothered to tell it what your goal is. Sometimes your
goal will not make any difference. For instance, if you're about to get hit
by a car, your brain really doesn't care whether you'd like to get an A+ in
organic chemistry or travel abroad this summer, it's going to try to get
you out of the way of the car. This is because your brain is, first and
foremost, designed to keep you alive. In general, this means preventing you
from experiencing pain. It's also designed to help you experience pleasure,
which is what makes us eat when we're hungry, sleep when we're tired, and
even create kids, who hopefully finish their college in four years too (so
that you can go back to seeking pleasure rather than paying their room,
board, and tuition indefinitely).
Brains are clever in that they avoid pain and seek pleasure, whether we
tell them to or not. (They even get better at both of these as time goes
by— it's called it "learning.") The problem is that, if we don't tell
our brain exactly which of pain/pleasure to avoid/seek, they'll go
with whatever's most convenient, obvious, and quick. Unfortunately, this
leads to short-sited thinking. What would feel good right now? Pizza?
Sleep? If you're trying to lose weight, then pizza might sound good to your
brain, because you haven't told it specifically enough that it needs to go
against its instincts and do what you tell it to do: forego short-term
rewards in favor of a greater future reward—maintaining a proper
weight. Likewise, you may be desperately craving sleep. In the absense of
overriding instructions, the brain thinks sleep is more important. Whereas,
in truth, sometimes sleep is more important than what you're doing, and
sometimes it's not. When in doubt, about any decision, goals are what keep
us on track.
When you set a goal, and keep yourself reminded of it, the brain tends to
ask the thousands of daily little unconscious questions in their proper
context. Instead of processing the question, "Do I want this pizza?",
the brain asks, "Is this pizza more important than my goal to lose weight?"
If your body truly requires fuel (and nothing healthier is available), then
the answer is "Yes." If not, then "No." Or instead of asking "Do I want to
sleep?" (which is almost a trick question... who doesn't like to
sleep?), it asks the more appropriate question, "Is sleeping right now more
important than studying for tomorrow's organic chemistry exam?" Sometimes
the sleep will be more important, sometimes it can wait. The goal
that you have set is what makes your brain ask the right questions, all
throughout the day.
In short, goals are what keep your brain making decisions with an emphasis
on where you want to go, not this minute, but in the long run.
Are Goals Enough?
Goals, by themselves, are not enough. In fact, a goal, without a
plan for how you intend to reach the goal, is little more
than wishful thinking. As said above, the goal will help your brain decide
between choices A and B. But a plan creates entirely new options—C,
D, and E—for your brain to choose between, and then makes your path
so clear that, half the time, your brain doesn't even need to make a
choice, just as you don't need to make many conscious choices about which
route to take when you are driving a familiar route, such as between home
and work.
The goal is the "what." The plan is the "how."
The absolute best way to make any goal work is to sit down and make a plan.
(For tips, click here.)
Goals and Plans Are Nice, But What If I Don't Know What I Want?
This article opened by stating that many students don't know exactly what
they want when entering college. Most people do, however, have a few
general notions. Some specifically want to make great grades so that, for
instance, they can later get into a good law school. Others want to become
qualified for a specific career field. Others pursue knowledge in general,
confident that they'll figure out how to apply it later. Others have
notions of what they'd like to get out of the next few years that have
nothing to do with academics, such as living away from home for the first
time, making new friends, having many memorable experiences, playing
varsity sports, pledging a sorority or fraternity, dating, and so on.
There are many different possible reasons, all valid, and ultimately your
decision. Even if you don't know exactly what you want from college (or
after college), you probably have some idea of what things are important to
you, or that you might hope to get from the time spent at school.
If you're unsure of what your goals are, the first thing to do is to simply
spend some time thinking about it. First write down everything that
you think you might be interested in doing. Go ahead and write down
everything that comes to mind.
Even if you don't yet know what you want,
you still need goals.
If you're not sure what all of your options are, then list as one of your
options, "To find out more about my options" (an ideal goal actually, if
you don't yet know what your goals are). Make the list as long as you can.
Put down even the crazy ideas that pop into your head, just to get your
thoughts going—you'll be able to narrow down the finalists later.
Also take comfort in the knowledge that your options, priorities, and goals
not only can but will change periodically. That's a normal
part of the growth process.
Once you've compiled a list of all the things you think you might like to
explore while at college, the next step is to sort them by importance. You
could rank them in decending order of importance, or put some number of
stars from 1-5 next to each, depending on how important it is, etc.
Whatever works best for you.
If you're like most people, you'll have a couple of things that you know
you for sure want to do. Immediately set goals related to these!
After the no-brainers, you'll probably have a few items on the list that
you think might be interesting and a few more that you really don't know
enough about to make a decision. No problem. Just set another goal called,
"To Choose My Goals for College." When you create your plan to accomplish
this goal (because every goals should have a well-defined, written
plan), your plan will end up comprising mostly a lot of fun tasks to gather
information, such as talking to people, searching online, reading books,
attending introductory meetings, and so on, until you know enough about the
thing to know whether you want to pursue it or take a pass. If you're
pondering something big like which major to study, then consider taking
introductory classes in the candidate subjects to see if you like them. In
fact, many people switch their majors not because they didn't like the
classes in their old major, but because they took an elective class from
another major and discovered that they absolutely loved the field.
(Despite the inherent flexibility required of goal-setting, selecting a
major is one decision that's better to make sooner rather than later, if
possible, especially if you have a goal to finish school in four years or
if someone is else is footing the bill.)
Is That All?
College is one of the most exciting times of one's life, full of
wide-ranging options and open-ended possibilities that most people find to
be relatively rare once out of school. It is important to figure out early
on what you want to get out of it. Ask any college grad: Before they even
knew what hit them, the four years were over. It passes by very
quickly. So set some goals now!
And no, that's not all. It's really just the beginning. The people who rise
to the heights of whatever career or passion they choose will all tell you
that college was just the beginning of their education. The "ground
rules," or the "warm up," with the real thing starting when they got out
and had to apply all those things that they learned.
Though it's important you keep yourself reminded of your goals
constantly, you will want to revisit the whole topic at least once per
semester prior to choosing the next semester's classes. This is the time to
make sure your goals are still important to you, and if not, modify them.
Other goals may require a different timeline, such as goals related to
summer, job hunting, and graduate school.
But by beginning this process now (regardless of your age or year in school),
you are really embarking on a process that will never end during your lifetime.
The happiest and most accomplished and prosperous people in the world,
when asked, almost always set goals more seriously and consistently than
people who describe themselves as unhappy and unsuccessful. If college is
training for the real world, then setting goals now is training for setting
goals in the real world. By doing it, you will get good at it. And if you're
good at setting goals by the time you're out of college, you'll be unstoppable.
* Statistics: W. Habley, cited in Upcraft and Kramer, 1995
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