by College life, these two words instill chills in every youngster. Who does not like spending time at college, the fun with friends, the time at the canteen, the vibrant nights at the college’s fest, the group studies, and the trips as well as excursions? All these factors make college days joyful and memorable.
However, there are also days when students feel under pressure. The stress of submitting homework, assignments, dissertations, theses, the panic to meet the deadlines, and even the days of exams. It becomes highly difficult to handle anxiety on such crucial days.
If you are in the same situation and want to make your student life smooth and well-balanced, you need to set SMART goals in your life. Are you thinking that my writing skills are not appropriate for writing SMART? Well, it is not a mistake but an acronym.
SMART stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
What are SMART Goals?
It is well said, “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment” by Jim Rohn. However, many of the learners fail to maintain discipline after setting goals. You also might have filled your almirah and refrigerator with sticky notes. These notes remind you to accomplish your goals but somehow you’re still not able to work on them. The clear reason behind this failure is that you have not planned the SMART Goals.
The SMART acronym is a well-known strategy to set physically active goals. Setting SMART Goals gives you a clear direction to reach your goal while evaluating your strengths and weaknesses. These are incredibly useful to accomplish your goal in a stipulated time period. Being clear in your goal-setting makes you confident, inspired, and focused enough to be successful.
Let us understand the details of SMART Goals with an example.
Specific: It is highly important to be clear about what you want to achieve and who will be responsible for it. Therefore, the very first thing while setting SMART Goals is to be specific. The specification will assist you in understanding your mission by eliminating misconceptions and misunderstandings.
For example: You are a student of B. Tech in Computer Science. Due to your curriculum, submission of assignments on time, and extra computer classes you are not able to partake in extracurricular activities and feel unhealthy as well as dumb. Now you want to join college clubs. Hence, you have found the specification to establish your goal. So, it probably be:
“I will join at least two university clubs which will prove helpful for me to stay healthy and I will learn social skills as well. At the end of the academic year, I will be part of at least one event organized by these clubs. ”
This is how students need to be specific when they set a goal in their campus life.
Measurable: After being specific, the next measure you have to take while setting a SMART Goal is that, will you be able to track your progress. Tracking your progress will help you to understand how much work you have already done and at what pace you need to work to fulfill your goal.
Example: “I have figured out that I will join a Yoga club and Cultural Club”. While practicing distinct postures of yoga, I will be able to evaluate the flexibility level in my body. Moreover, the cultural club will allow me to talk to a vast array of people. In this club, I will check my knowledge of different cultures and with time work on my oratory skills. At the end of the year, I will participate in yoga competitions.
As per example, till now, the student has specified his goal and found ways to measure his success.
Achievable: The third and another imperative aspect of SMART goals is Achievable. It means that whatever aim you have established must be realistic and doable. Make sure you are not just wasting your time while practicing something unattainable.
Example: “Now, I will make a timetable and assign the stipulated time to lectures. I would have 1 hour free in between the lectures, which can be spent in the cultural club. As the cultural club opens in the afternoon only. Moreover, after completing all of my lectures, I will release my day’s stress and regain energy by spending one hour in Yoga class. Hence, I can follow the maintained schedule easily, without messing it up.
Relevant: The goal students are setting needs to be worthy of their college life and must give beneficial and useful results. It is always better to ask yourself a question, is your goal pertinent to your long-term goal? If you get the answer yes, then you are on the right path, go ahead and nail it.
Example: Till the completion of my degree, I aim to become an excellent and bright student with cutting-edge technical skills. Moreover, the extra efforts made in yoga classes will assist in staying physically and mentally fit. The cultural club will inculcate social skills in me that will not let me be merely a robot but these skills will enable me to cherish my social life.
Time-bound: It is rightly said, “Time and tide wait for none”. As the quote suggests, students should always work in a time frame. While setting a goal, it is necessary to make sure that pupils give themselves a deadline. By this practice, students will learn to work under time constraints and manage pressure.
Example: “This is my last semester, so, I have just 6 months to work on my skills. To participate in Yoga competitions, it is necessary to practice more. Therefore, if there is a need to practice more, I will spend 1 hour at night practicing the postures and building flexibility in my body. ”
Till now, you’ll be very well aware of the term SMART Goals.
However, wondering how incorporating SMART goals will make your college life easy.
5 benefits of SMART Goals in your life as a student
- SMART Goals Instill a Sense of Responsibility: Making promises is not rocket science, but accomplishing these promises is not a cakewalk. Being a college student, it must be your responsibility to be loyal and maintain academic integrity.
This is quite achievable when you set SMART Goals in your life. While incorporating these, you make several commitments to yourself, which get cemented into your memory and give time-to-time reminders towards your accountability.
These constant nudges help you to work on your aim which further improves your academic performance or social skills, depending on the aim you set. This leads to higher levels of learning and achievement. A sense of responsibility further strengthens the attachment to college, staff, and peers which may inspire you to do better in your college life.
- SMART Goals Teach Discipline and Self-Control: Are you an impatient student? Or Do you stay irritated and impulsive most of the time? These symptoms imply that you lack self-discipline, which must be a major trait among collegegoers.
Being disciplined enables you to make efforts and to overcome academic challenges in your life. When you set SMART Goals in your life, it will inculcate willpower in you to convert the dreams into reality. Having a clear and well-defined mission in front of you will encourage and refrain from short-term temptations that work as obstacles in your progress. Thus, setting SMART Goals teaches you to stay in control and disciplined enough to filter out distractions.
- SMART Goals Help with Prioritization: Many times students get baffled about what needs to be done first and what can wait till the last moment. Due to a lack of organizational skills, they mess up many things and increase stress as well as anxiety.
To stay away from such mental diseases, it is significant for pupils to learn about prioritization. This term refers to determining the importance and urgency of the tasks. Once students are aware of the significance of their activities, it will become easier to plan, organize, and focus on the subjects. Ultimately, this will help students avoid procrastination.
When students set SMART Goals in their lives, the first criterion is specification assists them to figure out what actually they want to achieve. It helps to push further and provide a sense of direction. Hence, by setting SMART Goals, students will not run in a tunnel that has no light, but walk on a bright path with a clear destination.
- SMART Goals Help in Time Management: Time management is a skill that helps students organize and plan time between the activities they need to complete. Learning time management assists in better decision-making, less procrastination, and accomplishing goals swiftly.
SMART Goals’ T refers to time-bound. When students set their goals within a time frame, they control the hours by eliminating ambiguities. Thus save their precious time and utilize it in other productive tasks. SMART Goals allow students to transform from passive observers to active partakers in their goals and tasks. Ultimately, do not squander their time but utilize it wisely toward goals.
- Smart Goals Assist to Motivate: In case you are feeling unvalued and not considering the best fit for your course, campus, or extracurricular activities, you require motivation. Motivation has the power to improve the student’s behavior and performance. The time learners feel inspired, they feel positive and energetic toward their lectures as well as other classroom activities. Moreover, they take their mistakes not as failures but as areas of improvement.
SMART Goals setting provide the opportunity to make your goals achievable by breaking the whole task into small chunks. The shorter the task will be, the more college students feel inspired to fulfill their goals. Due to smaller tedious activities, graduates take challenges with great zeal. Hence, setting SMART Goals keeps postgraduates’s confidence uplifted and motivated.
In short, if you are a college student who is not able to accomplish your goals and finds it tough to manage your time, try to incorporate SMART goals into your educational life. It will help you create result-oriented plans by reducing stress and providing you with a clear direction. Thus, to reduce your stress, implement the SMART Goals and enjoy your campus life.
