Goal Setting

[Cheshire_Cat]

Well, it is that time of year again for our office- Goal setting for FY 2016.  So of course, I jokingly filled out the form with my goals for the Ph.D program instead of my job.  I'll fill it out in earnest for my job in a little while.  Anyways, I thought it was a good exercise, clarifying some of the things I need to do for my Ph.D program, and so I thought I'd bring the question to you.  What are your goals for 2016 and how will they be achieved?  My work also has a format, so I'll use that.

 

Goal 1

State Goal:  Refresh my understanding of linear algebra, calculus, and intermediate statistics.

 

How does this goal link to career growth and/or personal performance?  A better understanding of these three topics will help me in my research and perform better in my Ph.D classes.

 

How will it be measured? Complete MIT open courseware classes on these three topics.

 

 

Goal 2

State Goal: Become more familiar with current research in the area of accounting, specifically auditing.

 

How does this goal link to career growth and/or personal performance? This will help me to understand what the hot topics for auditing are right now, which can then give me ideas for my own research.

 

How will it be measured?  I want to develop a habit of reading at least one or two journal articles a week, outside of my

coursework.  I also need to familiarize myself with the top journals in my area.  Measuring this should be by counting how many outside articles I read each month, with the goal of 6.  Or by reading and journaling for 30 minutes a day, 6 days a week on research articles I read.

 

 

Goals 3 &4 are just to perform satisfactorily in my doctorate classes and budget my money wisely.   I think how it helps and how it will be measured is pretty self explanatory. (3.5 GPA and little or positive budget variance)

 

So, what do y'all think?  Do you have any goals you want to share?

[random_grad]

That s a very timely idea! I was just thinking about this this morning, that it was time to think about goals. I already have goals for the summer which are quite modest: reread the core primary texts in my are (why: refresh knowledge and potential find new ideas), read this year's books by my potential advisor and a few other professors of interest (for obvious reasons + professional dvpt), read a few major works of world literature (for general erudition and entertainment) - metrics for these are all very simple: read.

otherwise also think about the field in general and topics to explore (no metrics for this, I don t function that way.)

For my 1st year of PhD goals will be comnection with dpt community, get closure in the one topic outside of my specialty I still want to explore, understand current trends in my field, try to publish my seminar papers.

also apply for DAAD to learn German, but that might not be required. We ll see.

[quirkycase]

Right now I have three main goals:

 

Goal 1

State Goal:  Enhance my knowledge of basic linguistics.

 

How does this goal link to career growth and/or personal performance?  I'm switching fields for my MA, so I have very little background in linguistics.  Hopefully gaining a stronger base will help me transition easier.

 

How will it be measured? Lots and lots of reading. 

 

Goal 2

State Goal:  Brush up on my Korean.

 

How does this goal link to career growth and/or personal performance?  Hopefully it will help me place into higher level classes so I can progress further in the course of my program. 

 

How will it be measured? Mostly by reviewing materials I already have. 

 

Goal 3

State Goal:  Start a detailed budget. 

 

How does this goal link to career growth and/or personal performance? I need to get in the habit of paying careful attention to my finances, as I have an extremely low cost of living now and don't follow a strict budget.  As a grad student, I'll be completely broke, making it much more important that I monitor my spending.