Your Freshman Year Goal-Setting Workshop

Your Freshman Year Academic and Career Goals

What are some of the academic goals you have coming into college? What possible careers do you find turning around in your head? Are you premed? Does the idea of becoming a lawyer appeal to you? Or perhaps you are focused on a career in business or are interested in becoming an entrepreneur? What subjects would you need to take to properly explore these fields? Maybe one of your goals should be to establish a plan of action to properly explore and perhaps complete one of these programs.

What about teaching or working for a nonprofit?

Or are you interested in a career in finance?

Or something else in the health professions?

Would you need to talk to an academic adviser to help you along?

What courses did you enjoy in high school that you might want to study more intensively in college? Did you enjoy American literature? Maybe you were a history buff. Perhaps you want to try to really understand economics.

Your Freshman Year Social Goals

For a great many of us, college is a time for reinvention - a chance to wipe the slate from high school or boarding school clean and to start a new life in a new place. So who is it that you'd like to become? Do you want to be more outgoing, to force yourself to get out of your comfort zone, to be more daring about asking someone out? Or were you someone who got labeled in high school as a flirt or player or phony or brownnoser, and now find yourself eager to shake that rap as you start your new life in college?

Or are you somewhere in the middle"someone who is just resolved to make a few new good friends, find someone you care about (and actually date the person, rather than just wistfully think about dating him or her), and make a good life for yourself in college?

Whether you were wildly popular, an outcast, a nerd, or anything else on the social spectrum in high school, the slate is clean again now. 

Your Freshman Year Extracurricular Goals

As you are well aware, college is about much more than simply taking the classes you need to complete your major and graduate with your degree. Along the way, there will be countless opportunities to get involved with varsity or intramural sports and a blinding array of campus and community activities.

The sad part is, you can't even come close to sampling them all.

What you can do, though, is brainstorm a list of things you'd like to try during freshman year or during college generally, so that you'll have a better way to manage the barrage of opportunities as they come at you.

Were you recruited to play varsity athletics in college? Maybe you weren't recruited, but believe yourself to be good enough to "walk on" to the team. Or maybe the sport you're most interested in wasn't offered in your high school"but is offered at your college. And what about club sports or intramurals? Is there a sport you'd like to learn or get more involved with on a social level? 

Your Freshman Year Physical Goals

So what are your physical goals for freshman year?

We've mentioned the Freshman 15 and you had probably already heard about it: the number of pounds the typical freshman adds due to his or her rocky transition to the beer-and-pizza diet of college. Do you have a plan to keep this from happening to you?

Maybe you've always wanted to take up running or rollerblading or mountain biking. Maybe what you want most of all is simply to stay dedicated to an exercise program. Do you want to train for a road race or even a marathon? Maybe you've always wanted to start lifting weights, but never had the facilities available to you. Check out your college gym"they're available to you now. 

Your Freshman Year Financial Goals

“Financial goals?” you ask incredulously. “What financial goals?”

Yeah, yeah . . . we know you’re indebted up to your eyeballs in student loans. We’re not talking about making your first million during your freshman year (although if you wanted to set that as a goal, we’re certainly not going to dissuade you from doing so!). What we’re talking about here is laying out some ground rules for managing your finances during your freshman year.

If you haven’t been already, you’re about to be inundated with offers for credit cards. Before long, it will seem as though every credit card company under the sun will be offering you credit.

Be careful.

If you follow our advice, you’ll sign up for one credit card and use it only for emergencies, as running up credit card debt for impulse purchases is one of the quickest ways college students get into financial trouble. Remember that bad credit will typically follow you around for seven years—which can affect your ability to get loans for graduate school, start a business, and buy an apartment or a house down the road. 

Your Freshman Year Spiritual Goals

Now hold on. Before you go flipping past this section, stay with us a minute.

We're not necessarily talking about religion here, although if you are religious, exploring your beliefs or finding a congregation on or near campus can be a very reassuring and centering thing to do.

But you don't have to be religious to be spiritual.

Maybe for you, being spiritual means taking a few hours each week to practice yoga or meditation.

Maybe it means taking a long walk in the woods one morning a week to be alone with your thoughts and to reflect.

Whatever spirituality means to you, do not underestimate its power to enrich your life. In your campus world, where people will often seem very id-driven or self-absorbed, maintaining some perspective can be really helpful. And whether that means you'd like to get to church or synagogue once a week or simply that you want to read The Tao of Pooh this semester, don't forget to pay some attention to your spiritual side. You'll be amazed at how refreshed and centered it will make you feel. 

Now What Do I Do With All Of This?

If you've stuck with us this far, you should now have an abundance of good information written down to help ensure that your freshman year is as productive and satisfying as you hope it will be.

But you're not done yet.

If you've followed our directions, you should have written down a stream-of-consciousness list in each of the six areas. We hope you didn't censor your thoughts as you were writing. If you didn't, your lists may be quite long.

You now need a way to manage all those ideas and to go through them and cull the ones that are most critical to you - to choose the ones that you think will give you the most bang for your buck, so to speak.

Here's what you're going to do next.

Go back through each list and read what you've written down. Think about each item and see how it resonates with you. Some of the ideas will get you fired up as soon as you think about them. Others, upon reflection, may not seem that important or that exciting after all.

One More Step...

Okay.

You should now have chosen somewhere around eighteen goals for your freshman year or perhaps for college in general.

Create a master list of each of your goals and your rationales for achieving them, and keep it where you can refer to it often. Your setup should look something like this:

Tape your list of goals up to the wall over your desk or on the mirror in your closet. If you don't have that kind of privacy, keep it in your desk drawer or your day planner - but refer to it at least once a week. Daily is even better.

Do this for your entire first semester, and you'll be hooked for life. You won't believe the progress you'll make.

Additional Resources

Robbins, Anthony. Awaken the Giant Within. New York: Free Press, 1992.

Robbins, Anthony. Personal Power (audio series). Robbins Research International. (www.anthonyrobbins.com)

Robbins, Anthony. RPM Planner Kit (time management system).
(www.anthonyrobbins.com)

Robbins, Anthony. Unlimited Power: The New Science of Personal Achievement.
New York: Free Press, 1997.