Search
Close this search box.

The Life Goals Exercise: Context for Students’ Big Questions

Credit: iStock.com/anyaberkut
Credit: iStock.com/anyaberkut

Students often ask teaching faculty to help them make important decisions that will affect their lives in significant ways. “Should I drop this course? Should I pursue teaching or industry? Should I do graduate studies?” These questions can only be answered in the context of a student’s life goals. Of course, most people are vaguely aware of what they want to do with their lives. But to obtain concrete answers to these big questions, it helps to have explicit life goals. In this article, I describe a short writing exercise that helps students clarify their life goals.


To continue reading, you must be a Teaching Professor Subscriber. Please log in or sign up for full access.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related Articles

I have two loves: teaching and learning. Although I love them for different reasons, I’ve been passionate about...
Active learning is a mostly meaningless educational buzzword. It’s a feel-good, intuitively popular term that indicates concern for...
Perhaps the earliest introduction a student has with a course is the syllabus as it’s generally the first...
Generative AI allows instructors to create interactive, self-directed review activities for their courses. The beauty of these activities...
I’ve often felt that a teacher’s life is suspended, Janus-like, between past experiences and future hopes; it’s only...
I teach first-year writing at a small liberal arts college, and on the first day of class, I...
Proponents of rubrics champion them as a means of ensuring consistency in grading, not only between students within...

Are you signed up for free weekly Teaching Professor updates?

You'll get notified of the newest articles.