An Active Role

For the last two weeks, I have been focusing on tips for a strong letter of recommendation--building professional relationships with your professors and including details so the letter is in business form.  What I'm really suggesting is that you take an active role in your education.

Perhaps school is a familiar place to you as you've been in school for what seems like all your life.  If you're returning to school after years of work, it can be an unfamiliar place.  Regardless, the word 'school' carries memories, feeling, and expectations and within a couple of weeks, whatever habits you've had in school before, can begin to influence your experience now.

Today's blog is about being aware of how you approach school and beginning to take charge of patterns that help or hinder you.  In many ways, it's approaching school as an adult making active decisions, rather than a child being subject to rules and controls.

CC/Flickr/B Tal

Just as an athlete prepares and trains for a contest first by setting a goal and creating a plan to achieve the goal, so a student must also prepare for the training of the mind by setting goals and implementing plans for achievement.  No one can tell you what your goals should be.  Personally, I hope that you are considering fields of work that engage you in science or technology or perhaps engineering and mathematics.  Why?  I recognize the importance of skillful people from many backgrounds in those positions and the need for creators of new knowledge in all of those fields.

But in the end, just as the athlete must set his or her course, so the student must define themselves.  To frame it one way, nothing to it, but to do it!