Continuing Academic Success Essay

Continuing Academic Success
Christopher Spencer
GEN/201
May 26, 2015
Susan Cameron

Academic Success As a student, I must possess the willingness, determination, and perseverance to ensure my success academically. It takes an understanding of the direction I want to go and the level of education I want to achieve, to have the passion to face the struggle that I as a student am sure to face when completing academic studies. The following information discusses goals that will lead to my academic success, how the writing process can help me advance in my education. Discussed further are steps used to improve critical thinking skills, the university resources and how they help to ensure academic success. Also covered are the benefits and challenges of working with outside sources and the important lessons that I have learned during this course.
Setting Goals In goal setting, it is clear for the student to understand his or her direction. Knowing the path he or she wants to take in his or her academic studies will help the student to set realistic and reachable goals. These goals also need to have a timeframe that correlate to each goal ensuring that enough time is allocated for the goal to be achieved. Another key part of setting goals is being honest with oneself, having hope and being very optimistic. “Researchers utilize both hope and optimism to reveal a future direction (Chemers et al., 2000). Hope and optimism can exemplify two different variables, despite similarities (Lopez & Snyder, 2002)” (Bressler, L. A., Bressler, M. E., & Bressler, M. S. 2010 p.5). Although related, having hope and being optimistic are very different. Optimism is the expectation of positive outcomes or events while hope is more of the desire that accompanies such expectations. This takes us into our next section where both hope and optimism are needed to set educational and career goals. Educational goals are a step towards my career goals. Goal setting is an important part of life. Setting larger goals with smaller goals along the way helps me realize I’m not stagnant in reaching those larger goals. This method of goal setting has helped me through life in many ways. It encourages me each time a smaller goal is achieved and keeps me moving towards my larger goals. My educational goal is a bachelor of science in information technology. I hope to reach that goal within the next three years. Which once achieved leads me to phase two career goals. My career goals are to become an IT security manager. As I stated smaller goals along the way will help me stay on track while I work towards this. Once I am a few classes into my upper-level classes, I will look for an internship where I can learn and adapt to a new work environment. Hopefully, if all goes well have a career waiting when I graduate.

The Writing Process “Academic writing is an ongoing process of development, with the demands of academic writing increasing as students’ progress through their studies” (O'Brien, O., & Dowling-Hetherington, L. 2013 p. 2). Academic writing is critical to the success of a student. It takes writing what the student has researched and processed through his or her understanding to convey to the instructor or facilitator, that he or she had comprehended the information being taught. It is through academic writing that one becomes more confident in the knowledge gained through academic course, which allows one's success in the working world.

Ethical Lens Inventory My Ethical Lens Inventory (ELI) is another very helpful tool. The ELI showed me some qualities that are well known and others that are not as visible. I am Results and Reputation-based person that seeks a balance between myself and others. It has shed light on other issues in my inventory as well. The fact that is very obvious after taking the ELI assessment is that I am satisfied with to little good. To help rectify that I have started setting higher goals for

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