Section 1: Intro to Goal Setting There is life after high school….where do you want it to lead? Imagine you are about to graduate from high school.
1. What do you hope happens next?
2. What goals do you have?
3. What do you envision yourself doing? Is it college, the military, an apprenticeship, a job or something else?
4. What do you need to do to make sure your post-high school goals happen? List two short term goals you would set to be sure you reach that outcome.
5. Explain how your goals will lead to the desired outcomes for the next step after high school.
6. What steps do you feel are involved in setting and accomplishing a goal?

certain terms and schedules, and you must turn in assignments at specified times. These goals are mostly set for you by someone else.

But there are plenty of goals for you to define yourself. For example, you decide what you would like to major in. You decide how long you are going to be in college or what terms you want to enroll in. You largely plan how you would like your studies to relate to employment and your career.

Goals can also be sidetracked. Consider the following scenario in which a student makes a discovery that challenges her to reexamine her goals, priorities, and timetables:

Janine had thought she would be an accountant, even though she knew little about what an accounting job might entail. Her math and organizational skills were strong, and she enjoyed taking economics courses as well as other courses in her accounting program. But when one of her courses required her to spend time in an accounting office working with taxes, she decided that accounting was not the right fit for her, due to the higher-stress environment and the late hours.

At first she was concerned that she invested time and money in a career path that was not a good fit. She feared that changing her major would add to her graduation time. Nevertheless, she did decide to change her major and her career focus.

Janine is now a statistician with a regional healthcare system. She is very happy with her work. Changing her major from accounting to statistics was the right decision for her.

This scenario represents some of the many opportunities we have, on an ongoing basis, to assess our relationship to our goals, reevaluate priorities, and adjust. Opportunities exist every day—every moment, really!

Explanation: