Educational Goals Essay

Ever since I was young, my parents encouraged me to pursue a degree in higher education. This insistence meant that the movement from high school to college was a given, not a concept to attempt, rather a grounded inevitability. It was an experience wrapped in certainty and all through grade school (in a wealthy, white, suburb) I appreciated it as it was. It was not until much later in my life that I realized a college degree was a privilege I had, rather than a given. Once this self-efficacy was established, I was forced to redesign the reasoning behind my educational pursuit, to become the architect of my education. I was reoriented toward this higher goal that promised some vague success to be saved for the future. This transformation from necessity to wonder spurred my desire for a vocation, not a degree, which would hopefully allow me to express my passions to the world. My primary reason in pursuing a college education is wrapped up in a story about what I want to do with my future. For my senior year of high school my parents took me on a trip to New York City. Among the monolithic buildings, winding concrete streets, and towering office buildings, we …show more content…
High academic achievement has been and remains my focus for my school career. As much as it seems like a means to an end, I also realize that the work I put into academics now is infinitely important to my success as an individual. Many people go through their entire college career imagining that if they work to get the highest grade possible they will learn, but only as a side effect. My goal in college is to learn as a primary objective, rather than as an unintended consequence. I believe that it is important to get good grades, but I have realized that the classes that I struggle with are the classes which I take the most away from, ergo, hard work can be a greater determinant of knowledge than grades will ever