My goal, in the broadest sense, is to be able to spend the rest of my life working with the issues that I am passionate about. I think that for me, this is a great way to conceptualize my goal, because it allows for flexibility in my plans to achieve that goal. I am looking forward this coming academic year because I am expecting to have a lot of new experiences related to my passions, especially with extracurricular leadership experiences.
This summer, I have really learned a lot about myself. I’ve learned about my academic interests, career interests, and even my strengths/weaknesses in certain areas. I’ve learned a lot about my ideal work environment, for one, and my internship working for a judge has completely changed the way I see my ideal career. On the other hand, some of the experiences that I’ve had this summer have made me question the things I always imagined myself doing in the future. Additionally, I learned that I am able to manage my time and discipline myself to work independently very well, and I am good at balancing several responsibilities at once. However, I found that although I am able to discipline myself to work for many hours straight, I do struggle with keeping my focus. I can have a really short attention span, apparently! The challenge I imagine that I’ll have to confront in the future in terms of achieving my career/academic goals is knowing how to balance pushing myself to reach my full potential with being kind and gentle with myself. That’s nearly always the challenge I have with almost everything.
I had an experience with making a mistake this past semester that I learned a lot from. I took a class that I assumed would be super easy for me, and because of my expectations, I nearly failed one of the first exams. It hit me harder than it should have, and I began to question my competence. I had to quickly shift my mindset to thinking about the class as something I actually needed to work at and spend more time outside of class studying. I was able to make up for my mistakes moving forward in the class, and I ended up earning an A in the course. I learned a lot about myself! Even though it was difficult, I’m glad I had the experience.