This essay is built on six short term and long term goals I have created for my college career. Students were asked to write an in-depth exploration of each of their goals while connecting each goal to a previous texts the class had read. These connections helped create a foundation for each goal, further helping each student develop a set of goals for our college experience.

Goal Setting For Freshman Year

The transition from highschool to college feels monumental to any student. As all of these changes begin to occur, it is important to focus on where you would like this transition to bring you. Setting goals to create a clearer image of your ideal future is a productive way to help reach your potential. Personally, my transition has been difficult as I begin to navigate the adult world. As such, I have aquired goals in the personal, professional, and extracurricular regions of my life. Together, all of these goals will help take me one step closer to the citizen I aspire to be.

My first personal goal is to eat at least two meals a day. With all these changes to my schedule and life, I have begun to forget the simple things. I need to be able to make time for myself to do things like eat. Especially as a vegan, it’s hard to find foods to eat. I need to learn how to manage, instead of simply not eating at all. Looking at Dweck’s growth mindset theory, I need to look towards the “yet.” Although I’m having a hard time, I need to understand that this is a growing phase . Instead of thinking that I don’t have time to eat, I need to understand that the more correct statement would be: I haven’t found time to eat yet. With this simple strategy I feel I will be able to reach my goal eventually.

One long term academic goal I have for myself is to better my critical thinking and application skills. I am a very academic minded person and have a hard time applying some of the things I have learned. I hope to improve my critical thinking to the point where I can not only apply what I’m learning, but question it in a professional manner. Ungar explains that the liberal arts will help me with my goal because liberal art students are taught “critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills”. Furthermore, the UNE school handbook also says courses are designed to teach students how to “engage in informed critical and creative thinking about problems confronting professionals in that field.” This quote highlights the importance of critical thinking in UNE’s core curriculum. I feel confident that my liberal arts education will in fact help me with critical thinking and real world applications. 

My second short term personal goal is to improve my sleep schedule. As I balance school and work, I am usually awake by 6AM and asleep by 1AM. Five hours a night won’t cut it! The reason I am up so late is to finish homework after work. To fix this I have begun breaking my

homework up into chunks and working on each chunk during the short, free periods of my day. By proactively keeping up with my homework I hope to be able to eventually be asleep by 11PM. The core handbook explains that for every hour of class a student has, there should be about three hours of homework. Having 8 classes a week with a 1.2 hour duration and 1 class with a 3 hour duration, I am expected to finish roughly 37.8 hours of homework weekly. This work is important to my education, so I will find a way to get it done without it affecting my sleep schedule.

Another extracurricular goal I have is to write for UNE’s newspaper, The Bolt. I want to find a community of people to help me further pursue my goals. Ungar addresses the sense of community a liberal arts education provides in his piece The Seven Misconceptions About The Liberal Arts when he says “there is close interaction between faculty members and students and, at its best, a sense of community emerges that prepares young people to develop high standards for themselves and others.” I feel the personal and professional relationships I can develop from writing with The Bolt are important qualities only a liberal arts education can provide. The school is offering me an opportunity I shouldn’t pass up. Ungar explains how taking advantage of all opportunities I’m given during my education can be incredibly beneficial. 

My second short term goal in the extracurriculars is to find a balance of all academic, extracurricular, and professional activities. I am easily burnt out and tend to procrastinate, so keeping up with each section of my life becomes increasingly difficult as time goes on. I hope to be able to keep up with each activity so that I’m able to balance everything. Because this issue stems from my procrastination, I will be looking to Dweck’s strategy The Power of Yet to help myself overcome each task. For example, as I begin to stress about all the work I have due, instead of becoming overwhelmed and not doing any of it, I will remember that I haven’t done any yet. Eventually as I work through my tasks with the “yet” mindset the amount will feel less monumental. This mindset will help me from becoming overwhelmed and, in response, procrastinating.

My next short term academic goal is to be able to find all of my classes without having to look at my schedule. I have a bad memory, and I am new to the University Of New England, so I have found some difficulty in navigating campus. Although my classes feel unnecessarily spread out, the UNE core handbook states that “ actively participating in service learning projects, campus events, and other extracurricular activities that reinforce core themes, UNE students are

prepared to act as informed, engaged citizens.” Understanding why my classes cover such a wide variety of topics, in a wide variety of buildings, helps me understand why each class is so important. Although the variety makes memorizing my schedule harder, I know the classes are worth the minimal stress of having to check a schedule. Understanding why I have to do these things helps simplify my solution to better solve the problem. In this case, realizing why I am expected to participate in such a wide array of events and classes, makes the task of memorizing my schedule feel exciting as opposed to daunting. This simple change in mindset will help me memorize my schedule and the campus eventually.

My final long term academic goal is to get an internship which will help me pursue a journalism career. The liberal arts fields have always been considered hard to pursue after college, so I have always felt an internship would help me be a better candidate than the competition. After reading Scheuers article Critical Thinking and the Liberal Arts I have learned that, ”just 0.1 percent” of jobs declined for people with degrees in the humanities from “1980 to 2010.” This gives me less stress about my future job market, however, I still feel as though an internship will be a large key to any future success I may have. Looking further, the Core Handbook explains that my curriculum is designed to provide a “learning experience” to “prepare students for living informed, thoughtful, and active lives”. I feel an internship fits into this description of education, further demonstrating the benefits of reaching this goal and showing me that my education will help get me where I want to be.

Thus, with all of my academic, professional, and extracurricular goals in front of me, I now have a roadmap to becoming more of the person I aspire to be. As I progress through my college education I plan on coming back to this writing as a checklist. I do not expect to complete all of my goals perfectly, but that is ok. It is important to reference Dweck during this process and remember that even if I have not reached my goals yet, it does not mean I will not reach them eventually. I have created all of the tools for myself, and now is the time to use them.

Bibliography

Ungar, Sanford J. “7 Major Misconceptions about the Liberal Arts .” 7 Major Misconceptions About the Liberal Arts,

• sites.google.com/site/globalcollegesearch/7-major-misconceptions-about-the-liberal-arts. 10 feb 2010

• Dweck, Carol. “The Power of Believing That You Can Improve.” TED, w
• ww.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve november 2014.

• UNE Handbook, www.une.edu/sites/default/files/2021-08/2021-2022%20University%20of%20New%20England%20Student%20Handbook.pdf. August 2019
• “Critical Thinking and the Liberal Arts.” AAUP, 18 Nov. 2015, www.aaup.org/article/critical-thinking-and-liberal-arts#.YUtcONNue3I.