The Importance of Setting Goals

By Tiffany Herrera '19, Richard T Crane Medical Prep

Earlier this year, the sophomores participated in a Goal-Setting STEP every Tuesday after school. During goal setting, we’d think about our goals and then share them aloud and discuss them with the whole group. We talk about short term goals, long term goals, and SMART goals.

Short term goals are goals that can be accomplished in a short period of time; long term goals are goals that need a lot of steps in order to be accomplished and require more time; SMART goals are goals that you want to accomplish, but you make a plan to be able to get there.

During this time, we did some activities related to our personal goals. This included goals we had accomplished and the goals we still want to accomplish. We made a rollercoaster of highs and lows of our goals. My rollercoaster had mostly ups, but also a couple of downs. For the downs, we had to think how we could fix them.

We also talked about personal, academic, and family goals. We had to write down our goals and how we could accomplish them. Writing my personal goals on paper was harder than I expected because it is one thing to have goals in your mind – we all have goals – but the hard thing is thinking about how you will accomplish them. This means making up a plan and following through because there’s no reason in having goals with plans if you’re not planning on following through.

This goal-setting has really helped me put my mindset on a higher level. It made me realize that when you really want something, you will try your best to accomplish it. In my opinion, when you try your best, the outcome is beautiful.  

It’s been a couple of weeks since we had goal setting and I’m doing great in school, it helped me keep up the good work in school. I have straight As, got a good score on my PSAT test. Goals setting has had a very good impact on me in school and even at home with my family.