Hello and welcome to another episode of the Smart Student Podcast. Once again I’m your host, Dr. Ehoneah Obed and in today’s episode, I’m going to talk about “goal setting” for students.

In fact, every student has a goal to succeed in school. I know that you would agree with me that even before you started school, that is one expectation that whoever took you to school as your parents or your guidance had of you. They expect you to succeed in school and come out to work,  make money and live a happy life. 

But something that students get wrong is how they go about setting their goals. So even though you have a goal to succeed, that is a very generic goal. And at the end of the day, you as an individual have to also sit down at any point in your academic life to set goals for yourself.

So specifically I am talking about academic goals. And in this particular episode, I am just going to hammer on some of the issues that l found that students make when they are setting their own goals. And I would lead you in the right direction as to how you are supposed to go about your goal setting.

The first issue that I have found out about students and how they set their goals is that you usually set vague goals. The goals you set usually are too vague to stand that you can not really make meaning out of them.  

Let me explain further, for instance, you want to succeed as we all know that you want to succeed. But if you set a goal like this academic year I want to succeed.  That is a vague goal. What is success to you? Because obviously what is success to you may not be a success to another person.  You know,  so you have to be more specific. 

Have you heard about the word ‘smart goals’? Alright so at any point in time when you are setting goals you aim at setting smart goals.  And SMART is just an acronym so the ‘S’ is for Specific, your goals should be specific.  

The  ‘M’ is for measurable, your goal should be measurable. So at the end of the day, you should be able to measure it. Then the ‘A’ is achievable. Your goal should be achievable. Don’t just set any vague goals at all, make sure your goals are achievable. ‘R’ is realistic so your goal has to be realistic. 

So we have specific, measurable, achievable, realistic then finally we have time-bound. Your goal should be time-bound. So this is how to set a great goal or how to set a goal the right way. 

Let me summarise all these that the acronym smart is telling you to do. When it comes to goal setting, you have to set results-oriented goals. So your goals should be results-oriented. 

For instance, if we are still talking about the goal of succeeding which I said is vague, you can come in and say that okay for looking at my performance last semester I got this grade in this course so this semester, I want to increase it by let’s say 25%. 

Okay so by 25% you are going to be able to calculate what that 25% is. So for instance, if I had a 59% in a particular course and I intend to increase it, I could set a goal that in this particular semester, I want to get a grade of 80 let’s just assume that is my goal.

So in this way, I have made it results-driven. My goal is now specific. I need to achieve 80. In the planning stage, that is also one mistake that people do. You set goals but you do not plan towards achieving the goals.  So at any point in time when you set a goal you have to also draw out a plan to achieve that goal. 

Now my goal is that I want to achieve 80% in this particular course. What is the plan, how do I go about it, that is when you do some sort of analysis of your previous performance. Don’t forget that this is the smart student podcast and here I teach you, students. So follow and appreciate how to become a smart student.

We are still talking about goal setting, you have set a goal to achieve 80% in a particular course but now I am telling you that you need a plan to back up your goal. So the plan could be well, last semester I studied two hours every week for this course and I ended up getting 59%.  So this semester if I want to get the 80% what extra things should I do or how long should I be studying.  

So you look at the things that you did last semester that did not contribute to your success or that actually brought you down. Then you plan towards how you are going to change it for this particular semester. 

Let me repeat that again for you. In the previous semester whatever accounted for the results that you had, it could be what you did or what you did not do. You are going to consider those two arms when you are planning.  What didn’t I do that made me get that result then secondly what did I do that made me get that result. 

Now, I want to change that narrative. I want to get a better result. So what should I do so that I will get the new results I am looking for or what shouldn’t I do so that I will get the new result I am looking for.

Another thing that I encourage people to do is that since you know the people in your class, you know the results you had, you know the results other people had, maybe what you are aiming to get this time around somebody actually got it the previous semester or for some years the person has been getting that results. 

For instance, if you had the 59 that we are using in this example but you know somebody who used to get 80 or who had 80. Then the next thing you want to do in your planning stage is you want to kind of investigate not in the bad way but you want to find out what is making that person achieve that kind of result. Because if you know the past way that someone has used to achieve a result you could possibly try replicating it in your own way in order to also achieve that kind of result.

So that is one way to go about it. You set a goal that should be very specific then you make sure you draw a plan to follow up.  A plan that will help you achieve that goal.

Another thing that you need to note is that your goal should be time-bound. So for instance if it is these results that I want to get at the end of the semester. How long is it going to take me?

So you set the time. Is it before the mid-semester or before mid-semester what should I be doing? 

So put timelines to all the plans that you are putting in place. For instance, if you are saying that this time around you are going to study 8 hours it means now you are given a time. For every bit on your plan to achieve that goal, make sure that you have a time limit. And this could also apply to any sort of goals outside your academics as well. 

Another thing that you need to do as a smart student is to break down your goals into smaller chunks. So you have a very big goal to succeed by getting an 80 in this particular course. 

But now break it down. If you want to get an 80 in this course.  What do the end-of-semester results that you’re going to get entail? So they could be assignments, reports, group work, presentations, etc.

So break them down and try to decipher. For you to get the 80%, how much effort should you put into doing the assignment, how much or what results do you get in the assignment in order for you to get that 80% that you are looking for? 

You have to break down every aspect of the plan or the goal. Break the goal down into smaller chunks because when you do that it becomes way easier to achieve.

For instance, if I decide that in order to achieve my 80%, then it means I have to get a minimum of 8/10 in all my assignments.  So at the end of the day for every particular assignment, I put that in mind and I work towards achieving 8/10. 

That is way simpler than just focusing on the bigger picture that at the end of the day, I have to get 80, I have to get 80 and you don’t work towards it.

Another more important thing is that you have to celebrate the smaller wins.  So now that you are breaking down your goals or the plans into smaller chunks, you are going to definitely be winning with time. Let say you had a goal to succeed this semester as we are using the 80%. 

And obviously, you set a plan to be studying it 2 hours every day. And every day you are able to spend 2 hours studying that particular course. Then you need to celebrate that. Celebration or excitement causes some form of release of some chemicals in us that makes us happy and keeps us doing a lot of things.

We can even talk about the theory that is called the dopamine theory. And that is the same theory that box the fact that you like to be clicking your phone at any notification because when you hear that notification sound there is some kind of release of that dopamine which is excitatory. 

It excites you so you tend to go take your phone and look at it again. So what it means here is that anything that excites you pushes you to do it again. 

Now that you have achieved your smaller goals, you should be excited. You should celebrate it. You should be in the mood. I am happy because I was able to study this course for 2 hours today. If you do that, the body will feel excited about it next time it is still convinced to go and study and that is how to study well. And that is how to achieve the goals that you set 

Thank you for listening to this episode and from now on I expect you to set smart goals.  Set achievable goals and I know that once you’re able to do that you are going to succeed as a smart student.

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