My career as a student has had its ups and downs to put it mildly. Through a combination of personal tragedies, unclear goals, and sometimes pure laziness, I have worked my way through four different majors without a degree to show for any of them. One of my main goals for myself has already been accomplished: To finally find and stick with the career path that will make me happy. That is where the UOP comes in. After working in the computer industry for a short time, I realized that it was the place for me. It satisfies the technical and scientific interests that I have always held, and at the same time provides opportunities for me to express my creativity. With that realization out of the way, I now need to move my focus to more immediate goals relating to my education, also taking into account my new long-term goals and how I will accomplish them.

Carter, Bishop, Kravits, Bradbury and Wheel (1999) struck a cord with me stating, “Often dreams and goals seem far off in time, too difficult, or even completely unreachable.” I used to believe that I had all the time in the world to settle down and accomplish my goals. Now that thirty is looming large ahead of me, I

am lamenting those wasted years. Beginning back to school seems a large and daunting task. Am I ever going to get through this? I’m sure I will, but it seems like such a long road ahead. To prevent myself from becoming too intimidated, I am learning to focus on my more immediate goals: 1. Be sure to meet my class participation requirements. 2. Do the assigned reading as soon as possible. 3. Plan to leave open time to begin rough outlines of upcoming assignments. Keeping these mini-goals in the forefront of my mind is helping to me to stay on track with the class and also acts a reason to congratulate myself as I accomplish each one.

Carter et al. (1999) give us a list of strategies to fight procrastination. The one that jumped out at me the most was not to expect perfection. While I am not a perfectionist in other areas of my life, I often find myself fighting against it when doing school work. While I know it’s impossible, I often expect to immediate understand everything and to know exactly where I am headed with this new information. I have made a decision to just get started and go from there. If I make a mistake I can always correct it later, or at least keep the mistake in mind for the next project so as not to do it again.

Another goal tha

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