The Importance of Establishing Goals

Regardless of the exam or specific situation that an individual is studying for, it is essential for an individual to establish a series of study goals that the individual wishes to accomplish. Basically, each of these goals is simply an objective that the individual hopes to achieve in either the near or distant future by studying the material related to the exam or situation. These goals should be set before the individual even begins to study the material, as these goals not only help establish the overall objective that the individual is attempting to achieve by studying, but also help the individual to identify the methods that will best help him or her achieve each goal as well. For example, a particular individual may decide that he or she is going to study all of the chapters in his or her chemistry textbook related to chemical reactions for an upcoming exam. Since the individual has set a goal of reading every chapter in his or her textbook related to chemical reactions, that individual can identify exactly how many chapters are related to those topics and how many chapters the individual will have to read each night in order to achieve that goal before he or she has to take the exam.

However, even though the goal stated in this example is related specifically to how much studying the individual wants to achieve, it is important to note that each goal does not necessarily have to be specifically related to the amount of studying that an individual needs to do for a particular subject. Instead, each goal can also be related to the reason that the individual is studying the material in the first place. In other words, if an individual is studying so that he or she can pass a certification exam, that individual's overall goal is not necessarily reading a certain amount of material, but rather obtaining enough knowledge to pass the exam. Unfortunately, it can sometimes be difficult to measure exactly how much is enough knowledge in order to pass a particular exam so it is important for an individual to make sure that there is some way of measuring his or her progress towards accomplishing that goal.