Goals are synonymous with success. That is part of the reason why the goals section was added to the child life common application. There are different types of goals, short term or long term, but regardless of the scope of the goal what is vital is that it is a SMART goal. Lots of companies are using the smart goal model to increase employee productiveness, my own hospital has them coordinated in our annual reviews. So lets break down what a smart goal really is.
Specific: Goals need to be direct and focused. If they are too big and broad it can be hard to determine when you have reached your goal, often leading to goals left unfulfilled. Pick something that has meaning to you and you can feel purposeful about. Nothing feels better than obtaining a goal that you really wanted.
Measurable: This relates to how you will know whether or not the goal was achieved. A great example would be running. If your goal is "to get better at running" how will you know when you are better? What does better actually mean? Instead a better goal would be "to run a 5k without any walking." See the difference? If something is measurable that also means you can measure your success in doing that thing.
Attainable: It is important to set goals that can actually be reached. If your goals are things that can't actually come to fruition then you'll be hard pressed to be motivated enough to actually try. This might sound like a "duh" moment, but sometimes goals can seem attainable because we are so passionate about them. However, when you really sit down and think 'how do I go about accomplishing this?' it will become readily apparent if your goal is attainable or not.
Relevant: As a child life professional, or an aspiring one, it is important that your work/school goals are related to developing yourself in some way for the child life world. If you are a student applying for internships and one of your goals is to become better at cooking while you are living alone, the program coordinators are going to say you don't have the focus to be an intern at this time. Instead, you want your goals to be active and engaging with your work and passions. How does this goal relate to child life or making you a better child life specialist?
Timely: As pointed out earlier in this post, goals have varying lengths of time attached to them. Some can be accomplished in months time, whereas others might take years. What is important is you set the time in which you can accomplish the goal. If a goal is out there for an infinite amount of time then it doesn't really matter if it gets done or not, it'll always be there.
Goals are a really important part of life, especially when working in the field of child life where there is always more advocating and educating to be done. I encourage you to sit down and start thinking about your child life goal(s). What are they, why do you have them, and what are you going to do to accomplish them?
-K
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