3. Crafting Your Future: Creating Goals
This activity aims to help students set goals.
Discuss
Now that we have identified some of your hobbies, let’s see how our personal interests may impact our goals. Let’s review the Self-Evaluation Tool’s Goal Setting section together. How might your personal interests and activities lead you to goals that improve your skills or community?
- What is something you want to change in your life? How would exploring that improve your life?
- What is something you would like to take responsibility for at home or school?
- What makes you feel proud of yourself?
- How would setting better personal goals help you advocate for yourself?
- How might your self-advocacy goals change from different settings (like home, school, work, etc.)
- How can others support you with your goals (like family, friends, teachers, etc.?
Review
This is a starting point to make a goal. To reach a goal, you must plan. We have several worksheet options to help you plan to reach your goal.
Option 1: Charting the LifeCourse - Life Trajectory Tool – This is a simple tool to identify what you do and don’t want for your future self or community. What is your vision of how things will be when you’ve reached your goal? Use this tool to build a plan towards that future vision!
Option 2: Goal Action Plan – This tool will allow you to document more detail. You can identify the action steps needed to reach your goal and potential obstacles along your way.
Extending the Conversation
What are SMART Goals? SMART Goals (PowerPoint)
An additional option to our goal setting worksheets is using the SMART Goal Planner. Many college students use SMART goals in their classes or planning. SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. These criteria ensure that your goals are clear and reachable, with a defined timeline. Now that we have learned more about SMART Goals and have broken it down, let’s take some time to create a SMART Goal for you.