The Difficult Path: My Dreams and Goals in Life

Having childhood dreams and life goals can determine what your future will hold. During childhood, most children comprise dreams that may be unattainable, like being a Rockstar, playing for MLB, or being a famous fashion designer; but they also procure dreams that are realistic. Some realistic dreams children aspire to are: riding the highest roller coaster, swimming with dolphins or being a doctor. I have learned that childhood dreams can help life goals get underway, all that needs to be incited is perseverance, persistence, hard-work ethic, and drive. Even though accoomplishing goals is not easy and takes hard work and patience, having and accomplishinf life goals is of the upmost importance because having goals can set up one for a bright future and creates structure in ones life. Thus far in my life, I have had many dreams and have achieved many of my life goals. As a child, my biggest dream was to one day be a famous singer.

Something that has been a dream of mine since I was a vivacious five-year-old, was to attend my Mom’s Alma Marter, the University of Redlands. However, my most significant goal in life is to help society. Hopefully, fulfilling my dreams and life goals will ensure that I have a life full of happiness and value. To begin with, childhood dreams are important to the future we have. As a child, dreams are on a wide spectrum between unfeasible and realistic. Some children have dreams of being rockstars, while others dream of being a chef. But, something I have learned is they don’t only include being something, but also doing something, for instance, climbing Mt. Everest or traveling to England. In The Last Lecture, Pausch talks about a childhood dream that he had was playing in the NFL, and though he never made it, he learned some very valuable lessons. The main importance of dreams that stem from childhood, is that they can teach life lessons on the way. Throughout The Last Lecture, Pausch learned many lessons, but there are two that really stood out to me was dealing with critics and acquiring self-esteem. According to Pausch, “When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better” (Pausch 37). Many times on the journey to achieving dreams people will be faced with criticism and having high-self-esteem can be helpful to overcome criticism. High-self-esteem is a crucial part in accomplishing dreams because it gives personal motivation to keep pursuing those dreams until they have been accomplished. In the chapter “I Never Made It to the NFL”, Pausch discusses the importance of having great self-esteem and that it is something that comes from within, and is a motivating factor in achieving dreams.

Dreams aren’t always the easiest tasks to accomplish, especially if they may be outreaching, but if one is motivated and willing to work for it, they can be achieved. Pausch says, “You give them something they can’t do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process” (Pausch 37). Having childhood dreams are important because they help pave the way to a bright future, just like setting life goals. Secondly, setting goals in life are very significant and are beneficial in having a fulfilling life. There are many ways having life goals can impact ones’ life. A major way having goals can be beneficial is to what one achieves (Latham 126).

Life goals set a path for ones’ life and have many beneficial factors including preventing distraction, give focus, help motivate, and help measure personal progress. Goals are what help us move forward throughout everyday life. They are the initial steps to each step of our journies and are also the steps that conclude them. It’s crucial to understand the importance and significance of goal setting in life. In Flourishing: The Positive Person and the Good Life, Robert Emmons states, “Goals are essential components of a person’s experience of his or her life as meaningful and contribute to the process by which people construe their lives as meaningful or worthwhile” (Emmons 107). According to many experts on the importance of having life goals, is setting goals throughout ones’ life helps ensure have a fulfilling or meaningful life. Many of them agreed that the majority of peoples primary goal in life is to be happy. With the importance of making life goals, many of the experts also expressed the importance of the kind of goals to set, and that it is better to set goals that will endure over time. In Latham’s passage of The Motivational Benefits of Goal-Setting, he says, “Goal-setting theory also asserts that people with specific hard goals (often called “stretch” goals) perform better than those with vague goals such as “do your best” or specific easy goals” (Latham 126). Having life goals has greatly impacted my life’s journey thus far, and they continue to lead me down a better path. Correspondingly, one of my childhood dreams that is most significant to me is that I have always wanted to be a famous singer. Some of my first memories as a child were the days of when I was in a child choir. I have always loved to sing and it has always brought me such happiness.

There is one considerable problem, that this dream of mine is not very realistic, as the statistics of following my dream and becoming a famous singer are very low. In Myths and Realities of Professional Singing, Stapp said, “Professional singing can bring great rewards, but ample remuneration is rarely one of them., … singing is a grueling job that requires enormous sacrifices on the way” (Stapp 2). Unfortunately, there are many negative factors for me to consider while chasing my dream of becoming a famous singer. Some negative factors are the possibility of making a living, paparazzi, no privacy, criticism, rumors, constant travel, no family time, trust, and perfection at all times. These seem like very daunting factors, but they have not discouraged me. Thus far, I have not accomplished this dream, but I am definitely in pursuit of it. A major reason I haven’t pushed harder to achieve my dream is that since I’ve been older, I get so nervous and anxious that usually, nothing comes out when I attempt to sing in front of an audience. But, this is just a hurdle in my journey to reach my dream. I am going to continue singing lessons and start recording my music. Though I know, this is one of those dreams out of left field, I will continue my pursuit of becoming a famous singer through hard work and dedication, and though the possibility of failure is high, I don’t know what I can do if I don’t try. As Elbert Hubbard said, “There is no failure except in no longer trying.” In addition to dreams I have, attending the University of Redlands has been a dream of mine.

Ever since I was a child, I have wanted to attend the University of Redlands. Growing up as the daughter of a previous Bulldog, I have attended many school events and functions. Every year we have attended the annual 4th of July fireworks show, and I have always thought how spectacular it would be to attend Redlands. I was very crushed in high school because I saw my dream of attending the University of Redlands fade away due to my poor grades. However, hope was restored when I decided to return to college, and I am now an honor student. I knew I was going to apply to the University of Redlands, is because I can’t imagine furthering my education at another school. I have wanted to attend a school that will help me strive for excellence and to be successful, and I know the University of Redlands will do just that. Amazingly, I have just accomplished this dream. On June 1, I accepted an academic excellence scholarship to attend Redlands this fall, and start in September. With accomplishing this dream, I have learned that I can do anything if I put my mind to it and am willing to work hard to reach it. Finally, the most important goal that I have besides being happy is to help society become a more exceptional place. The best way I have conceived to achieve this goal is to become President of the United States. I know this goal is one that will be incredibly difficult to attain. When I tell people that I wasn’t to be President someday, they think I’m dreaming or overreaching, but they don’t know my reasoning behind it. I want to become President to make our Country equal for all persons and bring a voice to all people who have been silenced in the past. Now, this is my expansive goal, but I have learned the importance of setting smaller, more attainable goals, in order to reach my expansive one. In order to achieve my goal of becoming President to help people in society, I have set a few small-scale goals as benchmarks on my journey.

The first goal I want to achieve is to receive my Bachelor of Science degree, majoring in pre-law. My next goal is to attend a top law school and become a defense attorney. Once I am a defense attorney, I want to spend my free time working on the Innocence Project pro-bono in order to help wrongfully convicted felons get released from prison. Eventually, I want to go into politics and be a Senator of California to gain a better understanding of politics. Experts on the importance of setting goals say that it is important to set goals that are: challenging, specific, meaningful and measurable. In Setting Goals: Who, Why, How?, Turkay discussed how important these factors are together in achieving goals and concluded his passage with, “As [people] go through the cycle of goal setting, regulating and attaining, they will become proficient in evaluating their capabilities to engage in these tasks and develop their self­regulatory competencies, which is one of the key skills for 21st century [individual]” (Turkay 9). Now, I have yet to achieve these goals as I am currently working on my Bachelors, but I have already taken the first step in my pursuit to achieve my goal. I know that I have set high goals for myself, but the only person who can stand in my way is me, and I intend to persevere through all obstacles in my path. In conclusion, it is surprisingly important of how having childhood dreams and life goals can impact someone’s life. Unfortunately, it isn’t about if you have childhood dreams of life goals, but its what you do to accomplish them. Childhood dreams can be the stepping stones on the path to a successful life. In order to reach your dreams and to achieve your goals, it takes perseverance, persistence, hard-work ethic, and drive. Throughout my life, I have tried to reach all the goals I have set for myself and to reach all my dreams. No, I have not accomplished everything, but I will not stop trying until I succeed. As my Mom always says, “Anything worth having is worth working for.” I hope that by the end of my life, I have used all the lessons I have learned on the way to achieving all my goals.

To reach one’s dreams it requires one’s ability to check one’s steps as one progresses. This works for me! I have always been on the watch out of my ambition. I continually develop myself passionately. I have been progressive in life due to self motivation.

I could vividly remember no too long ago when I was younger; I used to ask myself so many questions about why I was born, my importance in the society and the true essence why I must achieve success in life. All these questions are what I was able to find answers to as time ticked by. I realized that, to be successful in life one needs goals and dreams, and the true essence of life is to passionately work, to love and be loved.

I could remember how physics subject used to be difficult for me back in high school when I first started, but I challenged myself to be one of the best physics students and I realized my dream by constantly reading and solving physics problems. Having achieved so much in physics, it didn’t stop there, on getting to University of Ilorin, one of the best Federal Universities in Nigeria, my dreams of becoming one of the students not only in my class but in the entire school of engineering was achieved even though several challenges were encountered many times on the way. The road was rough from complex projects, complex assignment, lack of conducive environment for learning and studying but, I remained and stayed focused. So finally I achieved my dream, I was amongst the best graduating students. I was happy that my goals were achieved and I realized that my success is even far beyond academic success but being able to implement the knowledge acquired in the university to actualize the main dream. The main dream is to be skilled and get a well paid employment from a multinational civil engineering company.

After the graduating among the best students in the department, I set out a scale of preference which would enable me to get the best skills that will help me in achieving my dreams. I learnt and I engaged in so many software training and it was fun playing with those software. After I was convinced and confident, I then applied to so many civil engineering organizations.

And then I passed so many aptitude job exams and I was called for interviews; however, after I had gone for many interviews I considered China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) because of so many reasons, first, it’s a multinational company and have a railway construction project going on at hand in my country which happens to be a unique project in Nigeria construction industry. This is an added advantage for me to learn, grow and thus getting me closer to my dream of becoming a chartered civil engineer. My dreams hasn’t stopped there, I realized I needed more and I asked myself many questions like what I if became an overall manager how do I manage the staff and the resources at my disposal? Or what about when I set up my own engineering firm in the future, the question is how do I manage the resources? And currently as an engineer how do I manage my team? This is the true essence of living… Having dreams and being able to achieve them, even makes ones to feel better.

It is my great pleasure to apply to this great University, University of Ontario Institute of Technology to further increase my knowledge to study Engineering Management, which I believe that if I am offered admission and admitted I will be increased in knowledge in the areas of engineering management and professionally grounded. I am looking forward to resuming to this great department to study Engineering Management this year, 2019.

Works Cited

1. Emmons, R. A. (2003). Flourishing: The positive person and the good life. American Psychologist, 58(1), 100-110.
2. Hubbard, E. (n.d.). Elbert Hubbard quotes. Goodreads. Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/412-there-is-no-failure-except-in-no-longer-trying
3. Latham, G. P. (2004). The motivational benefits of goal-setting. Academy of Management Perspectives, 18(4), 126-129.
4. Pausch, R., & Zaslow, J. (2008). The last lecture. Hachette UK.
5. Stapp, B. (2009). Myths and realities of professional singing. Indiana University Press.
6. Turkay, S. (2015). Setting goals: Who, why, how? Journal of Instructional Psychology, 42(1), 8-13.