How To Set Rewarding Academic Goals
| Adapted by WGU from WellConnect |
The start of a new term is the perfect time to determine the goals you want to achieve in the coming months.
Start with a calendar
Looking at a calendar of open days that stretch across the year can feel overwhelming. However, seeing how much time you have available will help you plot out the weeks to come.
Choose your own adventure
When you’re setting goals, you want to make sure that you’re not just looking at the goal itself, but also including any aspects of reaching the goal that will help you grow and develop as both a student and an individual.
Short-term goals can lead you to big rewards
Short-term goals are generally the tasks that you complete and the achievements that you collect along the way as you work toward completing a long-term goal. Short-term goals can help you to stay focused, keep you motivated, and provide a boost to your academic momentum that may challenge you to look for bigger and bolder goals to pursue.
Stacking rewards on top of rewards
When you’re thinking about the goals that will return the most reward for the effort you’re going to put into them, think about these three important questions:
- Is focusing on this goal going to reward you right now or later on?
- Will this goal help you prepare to achieve another goal in the near future?
- Will focusing on this goal help you to achieve one or more other goals at the same time?
Working through your goals should lead you from one success to the next or potentially several successes all at once. How you plan and prepare to meet your goals will help determine how often and how many goals you’re able to achieve, which maximizes the overall number of rewards you’ll find at the end of each stage of your academic journey.
