Acing the Undergrad

Chapter 1: Set Goals
What is Your Game Plan?

Before stepping foot onto your college campus, your personal goals must be established. Set goals in the beginning of your college career that are tailored to what you want to gain during your time in college. You might want to graduate with a 4.0 G.P.A., study abroad, play a competitive sport, run for a position in your school’s Student Government Association, or acquire an internship before you graduate. Whatever your goals are, you need to set them and write them down. Post them in a place where you can always be reminded of them, so you will never lose focus of the target.

College holds an incredible amount of opportunities that are just waiting for students to reach out and grab. However, before you can take them, you have to know what it is that you truly want from college. Without knowing what you want, you may pass up amazing opportunities, without even realizing it. Having a college plan-of-action helps you to better understand what you want, and actually acquire those benefits that are best for your life. Do not come to college without a game plan. Many students who enter college without a game plan end up graduating without the diverse experiences that were available to them; or worse, they fail to graduate at all. Don’t let this be you.

Realize that setting goals does not mean that your passions and desires cannot change. During our experiences in college, we found ourselves changing our goal lists by adding goals, revising them, and even choosing to continue some of our more challenging goals post college and into the working world. Simply put, setting goals gives you a plan and some direction as to where you want to be in the future. Having these goals helps you acquire clear vision and focus, which leads to success and greatness in your college career. Know what you want, and go get it.

Emeka
As a freshman, I established my personal goals at the beginning of the academic year. Someone once told me that having at least a 3.5 G.P.A. in college would open many doors for me in regards to internships and scholarships. Therefore, I made my first goal to graduate with at least a 3.6 G.P.A. My second goal was to obtain an internship before I graduated. I knew that this was a necessary goal for me so that I could gain work experience in my field of study, strengthen my skill set, and ultimately determine if the corporate world would be a good fit for my future career. My next goal was to acquire leadership positions on campus by holding offices in various organizations. I made this a goal because I wanted a way to meet people, build my leadership skills, and make a difference on my campus. In addition, my next goal was to find four potential partners to start a business. I am an entrepreneur at heart, and it had always been my dream to start a company. I knew I needed a team to make this dream a reality. My final goal, on a more personal note, was to find my wife in college. This goal was inspired by my frustration in watching television sitcoms showing people in their 30’s still going to bars every week and living the “single life”. I didn’t want that for my life. I guess you can consider me a family man.

I created a very diverse list of goals, wrote them down, posted them on my dorm room wall, and immediately started taking steps toward pursuing each of them. By the end of my college experience, I graduated with a 3.8 G.P.A., acquired a co-op (a 6-month internship), held many campus leadership positions in SGA and other organizations, and found my wife. Having my goals to keep me focused led me to even overachieve on some of them. I didn’t meet my goal of finding four potential business partners while at college; but this is a long-term goal that I am continuing to strive for after college. Having a game plan gave me clear vision to help me reach my full potential in college. That is the key. In looking for those business partners, I expanded my network greatly and met many amazing individuals who I still stay in touch with to this day. In diligently striving for your goals, you will gain valuable life experiences and obtain unforeseen benefits from your efforts.

Carrie
When I first entered college, I made a “bucket list,” which was a listing of all the endeavors I wanted to pursue and accomplish before I graduated from college. I purposefully made my bucket list as ambitious as possible to take advantage of all that college had to offer. My main goal was to graduate with a perfect 4.0 G.P.A. I chose this because I knew that someone had to be valedictorian of my graduating class, and I asked myself, “Why couldn’t this person be me?” Since I couldn’t provide a legitimate answer to this question, I made it my number one goal. My other personal goals were to study abroad, meet as many people as I could, and get accepted into an Ivy League graduate school. Creating these goals gave me focus and determination to make sure that they were accomplished before I completed my four years of undergrad. I even told my goals to a mentor at my college. She reminded me of my goals and inquired about the progress I was making toward them after every semester, which added an extra layer of accountability on my part. I was able to accomplish all of my goals and a few more that I developed along the way because I started from day one with writing them down and planning accordingly for success.