“I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” This adage by Jimmy Dean is absolutely apt for students who have just stepped out of the college with zillion dreams in their eyes to touch the sky of success. When you are in college, you desire of getting into one of the big companies lining up in the market but sadly do nothing to achieve the same. Students often forget that the strings of their career’s kites are in their hands only and by the end of the term, they remain empty handed with just one question in mind, what is lacking in me? If you are one of those college students enthusiastic to acquire beneficial experience but are encircled with haze and bewilderment, goal setting is the ultimate funda for you.
On the sojourn of attaining sky-high success, setting directions and focusing on the target or goal is of prime importance. Setting the direction for achieving the goals is synonymous to drawing the flawless map of your own career. Also, a set goal offers you a sense of reassurance and encouragement. One can inculcate this trait through indulging in interesting goal setting activities. Goal setting activities directs you towards the commitment that you make for an ultimate success in life. These activities do not just direct the students towards a bright future, but also enhance their personalities in the process. Participants become more disciplined, focused, concentrated, dedicated and hard working. So, for all those career-oriented students, given below are numerous interesting goal setting activities. Check them out for that sky-high career.
Goal Setting Activities
Institution Encouragement
Educational institutions today are forgetting to teach the goal setting skills to their students. To inject this excellent trait in each one of them, teachers on a regular interval must divide the entire class into groups and then assign a set goal to be achieved in a specific defined time. The teacher must coordinate, assist and guide students for quick and better results. These goals can be anything which is knowledgeable and worth achieving like raising fund to help needy people, planting saplings in the area around the institute, taking up a part time job, learning any new hobby, helping new students in the institute, working for some NGO, making a project on any given topic, making charts on popular people and their accomplishments, etc.
Taking Up Assessment Tests
Taking up assessment tests can help greatly in realizing the importance of goal setting. Through the questionnaire, students tend to get a clear understanding of their goals in life. Also, answering the questionnaire is likely to make the students more focused and get a complete know-how about their positioning. Wondering what kind of questions does the questionnaire include? Here's a sample: What would you like to become in your life and why? Write three tasks that you would like to achieve within a year? How do you plan to tackle and face each one of them? What would you do in case you fail to achieve a set goal? Describe a situation when you successfully achieved a goal? How do you plan to set your goals? How do you describe success and failure?
Job Shadowing
If you are willing to gain a rewarding experience and inspect what might be a perfect job for you, go for a job shadowing opportunity. Don’t hesitate or fear to contact companies matching your profile to ask for a short-term job. For example, if you are doing a hotel management course, you can ask for a hospitality job or if you are an engineering student you can work under some professional to get first-hand information about the different aspects of the field and also a first taste of work culture. At the same time, job shadowing gives students a chance to involve in research of companies which offer them a good knowledge of the present organizations and their status. As such, it wouldn't be wrong to say that job shadowing provides you a comprehensive exposure to the actual industrial work.
Prepare Yourself
While you might argue that getting good grades or being academically strong is the best way to prepare yourself for the impending exposure, know that bookish knowledge might help you crack an entrance exam or even an interview but when it comes to actually realizing the goal, you need a lot more than just grades. The world has become global and so has the work culture changed. Gone are the days when sole proprietorship ruled. Today, it is all about consolidation, partnership and joint venture. Working singularly is very different from working in a team. You need to look at different aspects such as teamwork, patience, administrative skills, customer service and creativity that you might not have bothered about. So, to achieve you goal, it is very important that you imbibe all that has been mentioned above and for the same, volunteering in activities and events is likely to broaden your horizons and help you think above the borderline.
Internships
Like schools, colleges too have vacations. Instead of whiling the time away, it would be better if you indulge in a professional internship. With the advent of the internet, finding one is not at all a daunting task. According to your field of interest, you can contact the related companies and apply for the same; they will surely get back to you. If you are a management student, you can do internship under entrepreneurs, new businesses organizations or MNCs. However, note that the big companies do not offer much learning in comparison to the smaller ones. If you are a law student, you can seek internship under a lawyer already practicing. The main motive behind this whole concept is to get an opportunity to taste the real flavor of the industrial work before actually entering it.
Priority Matters
Being enthusiastic is one thing and being over-enthusiastic is another! Most of the times, people while indulging in goal setting get over enthusiastic and set bundles of goals to be achieved. Result—they end up not realizing any one of them. While setting up a goal, you are bound to have an adrenaline rush but know that this state is temporary and will soon fade off. As such, get realistic and set only those goals that you think you can achieve considerably simply. Setting unrealistic goals and then failing to achieve them will only leave you disheartened.
Reading this article, you surely must have come to know the need and importance of a set goal in life which can be achieved through these goal setting activities.
