The importance of setting Goals

The change from school to university is a bigger leap than many people might think, especially if you move into another country and you are living on your own. For many people, such as myself, it grants them a great and unique opportunity to do what they always would have without the correct influence of parents, nothing but party!

I believe my personality always inclined towards this kind of person. During my years in school, I achieved amazing grades; always top of the class, never missing a comma. Yet my good results were always still criticised due to a lack of commitment to the given activity. I had a lot of parental pressure to achieve high standards and any grade below the A range were customary punished. Thus, I had direct personal goals that I had to achieve, including "not to get punished". In reality, my aim was not to get good grades, but the consequence of avoiding parental scolding evolved into an directly networked goal, "to get good grades".

In 2002 I started attended University. I applied for a 5 year MEng course in Systems Engineering with a year work placement in between. I left home and came to the UK. I discovered new things, met some new people, but most importantly I was now living on my own. The great distance between myself and my parents granted me a lot of leverage, their control methods were ineffective once more, I could literally do what I wanted to do. And thus, my direct goal of "not to get punished" got so watered down that my directly networked goals disappeared. You can imagine what was going to happen once this new life style was in place.....to be continued

"For me, goals are my road map to the life I want. They have helped me accomplish things I once thought were impossible." - Catherine Pulsifer