Creating and pursuing goals is an imperative aspect for college success

Developing strong goals and working towards those goals is a very important thing to ensure success in all walks of life especially in college or academia. Developing goals has many great benefits to it including: they clearly state what needs to be achieved, they define a plan of action, they act as a continuous progress report for yourself, an they allow you to stay on track and working towards the right things.

Setting and achieving goals overall is the most underestimated skill for success in college. Nearly 50% of the college population struggles with academic procrastination, and believe it or not setting realistic goals can motivate you and increasing your drive to achieve which will decrease procrastination. Students who demonstrate more skill in following their own instructions through goals tend to be more academically motivated. Poor goal setting results in less motivation, lack of direction, and not fulfilling one’s potential. This can often result in lower grades, frustration, discouragement, and even dropping out of school in the most severe cases. When you don’t have a clear objective to work toward and you are just wandering through school not really knowing what you want to do, it only makes sense that you wouldn’t be successful.

This idea really hits home for me, because when I was in high school I hated school and wasn’t sure I even wanted to go to college. I was a very lazy student in high school and didn't really put very much effort towards many of my classes. This was the result of many compounding effects for me, but one of them was lacing a vision of what I wanted in my future. It wasn’t until I got to college where I really found a love for learning and figured out what I wanted to pursue in my life. When I established the goal of going to medical school, I had an explosion of motivation to work hard and succeed in school. In order to get to that level one must get excellent grades even in the very tough classes. This idea of success I could have in my future if I put the work in has really pushed me to work hard even when I don’t feel like it or I’m having a bad day. Simply deciding what I wanted to do with my life and putting goals into place and holding myself accountable has completely changed my life for the better.

While making goals and working towards those goals is a good thing, there is a common misconception that you should make your goals public and tell people about your goals. This is simply not the case. Many people logically think that sharing your goals increases accountability, but this is actually the opposite of what many scientists have found.

https://medium.com/the-mission/the-accountability-effect-a-simple-way-to-achieve-your-goals-and-boost-your-performance-8a07c76ef53a

Muñoz-Olano, Juan F., and Camilo Hurtado-Parrado. “Effects of Goal Clarification on Impulsivity and Academic Procrastination of College Students.” Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología, vol. 49, no. 3, Sept. 2017, pp. 173–181. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.rlp.2017.03.001.

Carlson, Dori. “Setting Goals for Success: Writing down Goals and Using SMART Goals Ups Chances of Keeping Them.” Optometry Times, vol. 10, no. 5, May 2018, pp. 8–11. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=129734006&site=ehost-live.

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