Your Guide To Setting Academic Goals As A Student
With the back to school season right around the corner, I thought it would be useful to spend some time reflecting on how to best set goals for yourself as a student, especially when it comes to your academic performance. Of course, everyone wants a good outcome in their academics, and setting functional and well-rounded goals are a great way to achieve that.
Of course, these guidelines can be applied to other kinds of goals you want to set such as for example your health goals or financial goals for yourself, but today I wanted to specifically highlight how to best set academic goals for yourself.
I hope you enjoy this one and that you find it useful in your own academic success :)
My intention today: Introduce to you a set of guidelines that you can use for setting up your own set of functional academic goals.
WHY SET GOALS ANYWAYS?
I know there is a lot of talk nowadays about setting goals so whats the big deal?
Well, the main advantage of setting goals is that it gives you something to shoot for and a general direction to head in. It provides you with a well-reasoned and realistic way of approaching something which you want to get better in.
Goals encourage you to focus better and as a result, because you know in which direction you are heading, you are able to make better decisions. Additionally, setting high-quality goals keeps you focused and highly motivated because you know what you are working towards but fundamentally, also why.
I also want to stress that I don’t think its best to be extremely fixated on purely your goals but the idea is more to keep them at the back of your mind while your main focus should be your journey and the process. The goal is there to merely inform you of what direction you are going in, but your process and daily effort are what is key and what will actually get you to that destination.
HOW TO SET GOALS AS A STUDENT
Determine What You Want To Get Better At
The first step concerning the creation of your academic goals concerns the “what”.
It is all about actually asking yourself which area or what specifically you want to get better at which directly links with what are your current areas of weakness. So spend a couple of minutes thinking about what is an area of perhaps your studies which you consider to not be so strong. Here it is important to realize that areas which we want to work on do not only have to strictly concern the content of what we study but could also very well have to do with our study-related habits or even lifestyle changes that we want to make that will help us out on our academic journey.
Another useful recommendation when deciding what area you want to work on is making the distinction between what is in your control and what falls outside that domain.
For example, perhaps the subject of chemistry is your weakest academic area so you would like to improve your understanding of it. In line with this, you might set a goal that goes along the lines of “I want my end-of-year chemistry exam grade to be X”, and while these kinds of destination-based goals are alright, it is better to set goals that are focused on the process and the daily input, such as “I would like to spend 20 minutes each day revising topic X for chemistry”. This is because in the latter example, we have much more control over our goal and in the first example, the goal that we get in the end is yes, partially in our control, but partially also dependent upon other external factors which we can’t really influence. So keep this in mind, when figuring out what specifically you would like to get better at
Finding Your Why
Once you know what area of weakness you want to work on, it is crucial to consider your why - why do you want to work on this specific area of weakness?
This reason is entirely your own and will form the basis of your motivation and drive to keep going in those times where it may get hard or difficult. Your why gives you a reason and a purpose for doing what you do and for wanting to go after the goals you want to reach. There is no right or wrong answer here remember, only what feels right to you.
Some examples of wanting to improve in an academic setting ay include opening up further studying or career-related options later on, to prove to yourself how much you are capable of or enhancing your growth as an individual.
Creating A Functional Plan
Now that you have identified your what and your why, it is time to consider the how factors, meaning how exactly do you plan on reaching your desired goals.
A plan is there to keep you organized in your goal attainment but to also keep you consistent and on track. It makes the process of reaching your goals much easier because you already have a written out plan that just has to be followed through instead of wasting more time and energy into deciding what you will do, how you will do it and when.
A plan in this case often comes in the form of a revision planner to keep you on track with your studies but it can also include other things such as lifestyle habits you want to do on a weekly basis that will help your academics out or creating a functional series of reminders to help keep you accountable with your plan.
What kind of plan you end up devising and coming up with to reach those goals that you set yourself is entirely up to you, you just want to make sure that in the process of creating such a plan, you are being both realistic with it and adding in some room for flexibility within your plan.
Following Your Plan
Now that you have devised a plan for how you are going to reach your goals, it is simply time to put it to the test.
Try following your plant to the best of your ability for a week or two and see if you have to make any changes to it. Is it too rigid? Have you stretched yourself out too thin? Is the method you have chosen to reach your goal not effective? How could you make it better?
In order to keep yourself both accountable and more motivated in the process of getting to your goals, it helps to track your progress or to want to improve on something together with a friend or group of friends which can help keep you accountable and on track. Alongside all of this, you always want to keep in the back of your mind why you are doing what you do to make sure you are still heading in the right direction.
Lastly, remember that it is all a trial and error and that life is not perfect at the end of the day so don’t be too hard on yourself if maybe if some days don’t go exactly the way you wanted or planned out for them to go. The goal is to just try your best and giving your best effort is already much more than enough. That is all that really matters in the end :)
Try out these steps and let me know about your experiences with them :)
