Checking boxes of finished tasks (source: WIX)
At the beginning of the academic year 2014 – 2015, I set 2 SMARTe Goals:
1. Get at least 3.8 GPA in both semesters Fall and Spring.
2. Be able to confidently communicate in Chinese Mandarin at the end of August 2015. This goal includes:
a. Be able to memorize 1000 common Chinese words and phrases b. Be able to understand Chinese in everyday conversation scenarios such as ordering food in restaurant, asking for help and paying money in supermarkets, asking for direction on the streets, etc.
c. Be able to engage in conversation in Chinese confidently and instantly.
Until now, two third of the time of the academic year has passed and I’ve achieved 50% of my goals. However, the remaining 50% seems to be more challenging than what I estimated at the beginning.
Goal 1: I succeeded obtaining GPA of more than 3.8 in Fall semester. However, this target seems to be more difficult in this Spring semester as I took more courses and some of them are not in introductory level likes the ones I took in Fall semester. Despite that, I believe I will be able to achieve my goal if I strictly follow the studying plan I designed at the beginning of the Spring semester based on assignment submission and exam schedule. So far, my plan has worked quite well and I still manage to have free time to relax.
Goal 2:
This goals doesn’t progress as well as the first one. Until now, I’ve memorized how to read and write nearly 400 common Chinese words and phrases. Thanks to this, I can partially understand restaurant menu and product labels in supermarket written in Chinese. However, my Chinese listening and speaking skills haven’t improved much. Sometimes, I understand what people say to me in Chinese but I am unable to spontaneously respond to them.
Looking at what I’ve done in order to realize my second goal in comparison to my first one, I find out some issues. The most important issue is that I didn’t not follow my Chinese studying plan as strictly as my academic plan. Perhaps the reason is that for the Chinese studying plan, there is no severe penalty of missing deadline as well as no supervisors (I supervise myself). In the academic plan used for the first goal, teachers are supervisors and if I didn’t submit my assignment on time, my academic result would be spontaneously and negatively impacted. Another issue is that I concentrated too much on memorizing Chinese characters, which slowed down the process of practicing listening and speaking skills.
In order to boost the performance towards this goals (and maybe the goals I will set in the future), I believe I need to employ a supervisor and set up a punishment mechanism. Perhaps, from now on, I will give my roommate my Chinese studying plan and ask him to monitor my studying process. If I do not finish my weekly Chinese studying plan (as I’ve set up before), I will buy my roommate a drink so as to punish myself. I will also reduce the time to study Chinese new words by focusing only on learning their pronunciation so that I will have more time to enhance my speaking and listening skills.