New Year! New semester! New goals!
Goals are essential. Everyone should have goals! They help us focus and plan, we feel accomplished when we reach them, and they help guide us to live purposefully. The way I see it is, living without goals is like living without a purpose. What better time to start setting goals than the new year and new semester?
There are many forms of goals, like personal, academic, financial, health, and spiritual. The key to setting up goals properly is through the method of SMART goals.
What are SMART Goals? They are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time- bound. This kind of goal setting can come in handy, especially for us college students with all the academic goals that we make before each semester.
This semester and year I have made it a goal of mine to develop better time management skills. I have created this goal because last semester I developed bad habits of not planning my day out the night before and not checking my planner as often as I did my first year. I have realized that time management is KEY as a full-time student with two jobs and extra curriculars. Here is how I’m breaking down time management into a SMART goal:
Specific:
Goals must be spelled out. The more specific and straightforward you can be, the better. My time management plan is to make my hourly schedule for the next day every night, check my planner every morning, and keep up with important dates by adding them when I find out about them.
Measurable:
Goals need to measurable. If you can measure it, then you can manage. What this means is that there should be a way in which you can determine that you have met the goal. For me, making sure that I have a plan for the next day every night for at least a month is the way in which I will determine that I have met my goal.
Achievable:
Goals need to be attainable. This means that you do not want to create impossible or unreachable goals. For me, better time management is attainable, especially with a planner, calendar, agenda, to do list, hourly and weekly schedule.
Relevant:
Goals should support your mission or values. Making sure that I have better time management skills is relevant and important to me because it will benefit me as a student.
Time- Bound:
Goals should have a set timeframe. This allows for better chance of commitment to the goals that you set. My goal is to redevelop this skill into my life by the end of the semester.
It’s never too late to set up your SMART goals, but doing it at the beginning of the semester can start you off right. Even though our big picture goal is to get our degree, keeping track of the little goals along the way will help us accomplish that big picture goal.
I challenge all my fellow first-gens to go over your current 2019 goals and set them up as SMART goals!