Your Senior Year Goal-Setting Workshop

Buy this book »

Well, you've rounded third and are headed for home. This is the year you take over the campus, captain your sports team, run your fraternity or sorority, lead your extracurricular organization, write your thesis, and start making some really important decisions about your future.

This is your last go-round on campus. Your last spin through the course catalogue. Your last chance to take that art history class you kept putting off because it conflicted with courses in your major. Your last chance to date that person from your freshman econ class you kept wanting to get set up with.

By the beginning of your senior year, you should have most of the requirements of your major completed, and you have firmed up your plans about where your life is headed in the year after college. If you are planning to go to medical school straight out of college, you should be taking the MCAT this fall. If
law school is in your future, you should be taking the LSAT no later than this October. If you're looking to get a job right out of college, you should be deep into your search at the career services office by now.

Now think about what else you might want to do during your senior year. What experiences do you want to have? What places would you like to go, and who would you like to go there with? Once again, remember not to censor yourself. Just write down everything that comes to mind. You'll have a chance to go back through the ideas later to decide on your priorities. For now, though, you just want to dump your pent-up thoughts down on paper. Try to keep writing in each category for at least five minutes.

Your Senior Year Academic And Career Goals

What requirements for your major are left to complete?

Do you need to write a thesis or complete a senior project? Do you have a topic yet? Have you at least identified possible subject areas that interest you? If you haven't, do you remember a few things from the classes that you've already taken that seemed to resonate with you? What were they?

Do you have any distributional requirements left to complete? Have you completed your language requirement, if your college has one?

Are you a candidate for departmental or college honors? Do you know what you need to do in terms of grades this year to achieve those honors? Do those things matter to you?

Now for the fun part. Are there any upper-level senior seminars that you might want to take? What elective classes have you identified in past years that looked interesting or fun? Are they still being offered? Can you fit one or more of them into your schedule?

Are you planning to do some traveling after college or during your senior year? Might there be a history class that you could take that focuses on one of the places you are planning to visit?

Your Senior Year Social Goals

This is the last year that you will be surrounded by thousands of unattached people your own age. Have you found a good group of friends? Have you met the kinds of people you wanted to meet? Are you dating someone, either on campus or somewhere else? Do you want to be? Maybe now is the time either to approach that person you've been thinking about or at least to be open to the idea of dating someone more seriously.