Pre-Semester Goal Setting
Each new semester allows students to reflect on the past and consider future possibilities. With the start of a new semester, now is an ideal time for students to create goals. However, setting the right goals can be deceptively difficult.
It is easy for students to formulate academic-related goals, such as “obtaining at least a B+ in Organic Chemistry.” While this goal is helpful and praiseworthy, student success is not just about academics. Your well-being as a person strongly influences your performance in your classes and what appears on your transcript. Beyond just academic goals, students should also set social, personal, health, and career goals.
This post will help convince you to create goals, select strong goals, explain the SMART goals framework, and detail my personal suggestions for improving SMART goals. I also provide an example that applies this information, so you can duplicate this process.
Why Setting Goals is Important?
Setting a goal and physically writing it down is an essential life skill that can provide a multitude of benefits. First, goal setting can help you stay focused and committed to achieving a clearly defined outcome. Second, goal setting can help you align your everyday actions to make progress toward a larger, more overarching desired endpoint. The idea of goal setting sounds hokey and trivial, but it can assist you in focusing on your everyday, seemingly minor actions to make progress toward the destination you are hoping to reach.
But setting a goal is only half the battle. Students need to select the right goal. Frequently, when goals are too lofty, it is difficult to determine what you need to do to achieve them. It is the difference between saying “I want to travel” compared to saying “I want to go to Paris,” or an even better statement would be “I want to go to Paris and visit the Eiffel Tower by the end of this summer.” While the idea of “traveling” is a good start, it could mean different things to different people at different times, so specificity in goal setting makes for a clearer destination. Also, by making the goal specific, you can determine when you have achieved it, and it is easier to tell if it is possible to achieve it at all.
Setting smaller milestone goals can help contribute to achieving a larger, more time-consuming (or overarching) goal, ultimately helping you to stay committed to the general direction of success required to obtain that goal. For example, suppose you are a student considering going to law school. In that case, setting a goal related to that objective, such as getting an internship in the legal industry, is an excellent sub-goal that can contribute toward your desired law school acceptance. If you want to take better care of your mental health, your smaller, more focused goal might be to go outside daily or meditate for 15 minutes per day for at least four days per week.
What are Good Goals?
When it comes to goal setting, I always ask students to consider what went well last semester, what they wish had gone differently, what their values are, and what their long-term future plans are after graduation. The answers to these questions require significant reflection and time to thoughtfully select your goals.
If you need help determining where to begin setting your goals, on a sheet of paper, create a two-column list. In the first column, list things that went well, and in the second, note the situations you wish had turned out differently. The listed items should cover the previous semester or your entire college experience. Be sure to include aspects related to academics, social life, personal growth, and well-being in both columns. This comprehensive approach is crucial for students to not only focus on their present status but also to plan effectively for their post-graduate future.
For the items that you listed in the column of items that went well, consider how to set even more ambitious goals. Did you get a strong GPA? Can you set a goal to get a stronger one? Or did you drink at least 100 ounces of water most days and only drink soda at lunch and dinner? Then maybe your goal is to hit 100 ounces of water daily and only drink a maximum of one cup of soda at dinner.
For the items you wish you had done differently, think about how to set an incremental goal to start addressing that shortcoming. Maybe you didn’t focus on your personal learning outside of the classroom last semester. So, if you value being a life-long learner, you may set a goal related to reading three books for enjoyment during the semester or select an elective course in a specific content area. If you struggled with getting help from faculty members this past semester, you can set the goal to go to office hours for every faculty member you have in the first several weeks of the semester to introduce yourself.
If you have difficulty setting new goals, you should talk to a campus career counselor, academic advisor, or mentor. They can help you brainstorm what goals might be helpful as you continue your college experience.
Write Down Your Goals and Make them Visible
After working with many students, I think it is essential to write down your goals and have them somewhere where you can view them every day. Physically writing down your goals provides a couple of tangible benefits. First, the act inhibits you from changing them whenever you feel like it or when you first encounter a situation where you are struggling. Second, writing your goals down helps you retain them for a longer time in your memory, since the process itself is more active.
When it comes to writing your goals down on a physical piece of paper, my to-do list is on the right-hand side of my notebook paper, and my work goals are on the left side. This way, I am constantly assessing if my tasks align with my long-term goals and ensuring that my weekly short-term tasks include things that contribute to my larger goals.
To make my goals more visible, I printed out pictures representing my goals and put those images on the mirror in my college room. This way, I would see my goals every single day, multiple times per day whenever I entered or left my room.
In a different job, I also had a whiteboard in my office with my semester goals and projects. Again, keeping my goals constantly visible assisted me with completing them and working towards them regularly.
My suggestion is that wherever you decide to keep your goals visible, they need to be somewhere that you will see multiple times per day or at least once each day.
Pro Tip: You can also put your goals on your phone's lock screen, as your laptop background wallpaper, or even the background of your smartwatch so you see it regularly.
Goal Structure: Smart goals with ACTIONS
So, now that you have some of the basics about goal setting, it is time to make sure they are strong. A strong goal can be set by using the SMART goal framework.
S is for specific. Your goal has a very narrow focus that will be clear if completed.
M is for measurable. You can clearly measure if you met the goal.
A is for action-oriented. The goal has an action verb or an action that will be completed.
R is for realistic. The goal must be realistic within your constraints, like finances, time, and ability.
T is for time-bound. A clear date is selected to assess whether the goal is complete. Time-bound can also include check-in points to reassess whether sufficient progress has been made toward achieving the goal.
Pro Tip: R for Realistic in the SMART acronym is one of the hardest aspects of goal setting to determine. For instance, you may set a goal to become fluent in Mandarin on your own this semester before the semester starts. Then, once you start your current classes you can tell you do not have the time to become fluent during the semester. Looking back, this was not a realistic goal if you have no background in this language, but at the time, it may have seemed realistic. If you want to eventually become fluent in the future, your first goal might be to just learn present tense sentence structure or practice enunciating words for 30 minutes per day this semester.
Pro Tip: To make sure a goal is realistic with the amount of time you have available, spend some time creating your calendar for the semester. Hold time for your courses, studying (at least one hour for every hour in each class per week), extracurriculars, planned trips, etc. Then, make sure you have time for meals, sleep, and physical activity. I even suggest that students hold time as designated downtime, like on Saturday mornings. After that, look at your week and see how many hours per week are truly free and can be used however you choose.
How to Improve Smart Goals
Once your goal is in the SMART goals framework, I encourage students to complete some further steps. First, consider potential barriers or challenges you may face during the semester and how you will overcome them. Then, also think about the resources you can use that are available to you either through your institution or that you can access outside of school; this way, you can proactively prepare for potential difficulties you may encounter.
An Example Goal
Consider the laudable goal of getting healthier this semester. One problem with this goal is that you will not be able to tell if you actually completed it, as it is too open-ended and vague. So, let’s consider how to improve the goal.
The goal of getting healthier could involve setting a specific amount of weight to lift in a set number of reps for a certain move. Or setting a particular time to run a mile. Or establishing a set number of consecutive squats in the correct form. Or a defined number of servings of vegetables to eat each day. This is why it is so helpful to have a specific goal under the umbrella of being healthier; you can now put the smaller goal into the SMART framework. You might say: My goal by the last day of exams this semester is to complete 30 minutes of physical activity at least four days per week this semester. This updated SMART goals version gives you a specific action, indicates a way to measure success, focuses on a clear action, can be completed with the constraints you have, and provides a clear end date.
You would then consider the potential barriers to achieving this goal. Some barriers include:
Poor time management.
Last-minute exam studying.
Get sick during the semester.
On campus, the gym is full.
There is no money to pay for outside gym membership or weights to keep in your room.
After identifying these barriers, another list of potential resources and strategies can be created to overcome them. Some resources and strategies pertaining to the goal of engaging in at least 30-minutes of exercise each day could include:
Using the gym on campus.
Going to the gym once a week with a roommate.
Finding potential online workout classes that can be done in a dorm room.
Creating a running path around your campus.
Finding a weightlifting routine online that you can commit to adhering to.
Blocking out a specific time on your calendar for working out.
Running on the track on campus (or stadium stairs).
If you are on Academic Probation or Academically Suspended
At the end of the semester, you may have been notified that you were either placed on Academic Probation or were academically suspended. While this news can be challenging and hard to share with your parents or guardian, it’s important to set a goal to reach either Good Standing or be successful with the readmission process. Then, take some time to look into the requirements for these parameters and then put them into the SMART goal framework. Be sure to check out my previous post on how to tell your parents or guardians that you are on academic probation for additional help with this situation.
Conclusion
A goal can help you change your actions and behaviors, so even if you do not reach your initial goal of 30 minutes of physical activity at least four days per week, you may have completed three days per week and made progress. Your partial completion of the goal allows you to reevaluate it, determine if you are using your time efficiently, and either modify the goal or adjust your actions to achieve it.
Now that you have started setting goals for the semester, I encourage you to use the SMART goals framework and create three to five goals for the upcoming semester to help you focus on what is important to you.
Image credit: Ann H via Pexels.