1-Read pages 36-42 of the Chautauquas document.

2-Perform the time accounting exercise described in this Chautauqua: a)
This assignment must take place over SIX CONSECUTIVE days.
b)Use a small pocket book as described (pg. 38) to jot down your activities hourly. (You do not need to turn
this in.)
c)Transcribe your notes to a TYPED log similar in format to the one in Appendix 3 of the Chautauqua. You do
not need to use Excel, Word has tables as well.
d)Be sure to accurately account for your time. DO NOT LUMP ACTIVITIES TOGETHER (see pg. 39).
e)Tabulate the time spent doing the various types of activities (see pg. 39).
EING SMART IS NOT ENOUGH

These notes were written by David L. DiLaura of the
Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering Department of
The College of Engineering and Applied Science in
The University of Colorado at Boulder.
An early draft of this work was commissioned by
The Undergraduate Excellence Fund of The College.
The author acknowledges the trust and vision of the students
who oversee the fund and authorized that investment.
Colleagues and friends Leland Giovannelli, John Dow and Christine Gobel,
improved these notes considerably by careful readings, critical comments,
and good ideas. Any remaining blunders or obscurities are the author’s own.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
………………………………………………………………………………………………
……..1
WHY SHOULD YOU PAY ANY ATTENTION TO ADVICE?
……………………………………………………………1
CHEERING WILL NOT HELP YOU BE A SUCCESSFUL
STUDENT………………………………………………….2
GOOD ADVICE IS GOOD COACHING
………………………………………………………………………………..2
WHAT’S A CHAUTAUQUA?
…………………………………………………………………………………………2
A CHAUTAUQUA ON
GOALS…………………………………………………………………………………….4
HOW YOU BEHAVE DETERMINES THE PERSON YOU BECOME…………………………………………………..4
GOALS DETERMINE HOW YOU
BEHAVE……………………………………………………………………………4
SETTING GOALS FOR FIRST-YEAR
ENGINEERING…………………………………………………………………4
SETTING GOALS WITH THE RIGHT SCOPE
…………………………………………………………………………5
AN EXAMPLE OF SETTING GOALS
………………………………………………………………………………….6
LEARNING ENGINEERING BASICS AND GETTING GOOD GRADES ……………………………………………8
BECOMING CERTAIN, CONFIDENT, AND COMMITTED……………………………………………………….
11
ACQUIRING THE HABITS OF A GOOD
ENGINEER……………………………………………………………. 13
QUESTIONS TO ANSWER, THINGS TO THINK ABOUT, AND EXERCISES TO PERFORM……………………….. 16
A CHAUTAUQUA ON STUDYING
…………………………………………………………………………….. 18
AN ASSESSMENT OF YOUR
STUDYING………………………………………………………………………….. 18
THE ROLE OF
STUDY………………………………………………………………………………………….
….. 19
EFFECTIVE STUDY
………………………………………………………………………………………………
.. 20
LEARNING FROM CYCLES OF STUDY
……………………………………………………………………………. 22
EFFECTIVE
PRACTICE……………………………………………………………………………………….
……. 23
CAREFUL READING AS PART OF EFFECTIVE STUDY
…………………………………………………………… 23
INTENSITY AND ENDURANCE OF STUDY: MANAGING DISTRACTIONS …………………………………………. 25
INTENSITY AND ENDURANCE OF STUDY: MANAGING YOUR ATTENTION ……………………………………… 27
STUDYING WITH YOUR LECTURE
NOTES………………………………………………………………………… 27
STUDYING WITH
OTHERS…………………………………………………………………………………………
. 28
KNOWING WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW
…………………………………………………………………………….. 29
QUESTIONS TO ANSWER, THINGS TO THINK ABOUT, AND EXERCISES TO PERFORM……………………….. 30
A CHAUTAUQUA ON LECTURES
……………………………………………………………………………. 32
THE ROLE OF
LECTURES……………………………………………………………………………………….
… 32
BEING THERE
………………………………………………………………………………………………
……… 32
BEING INVOLVED: LISTENING AND TAKING NOTES
…………………………………………………………….. 33
BEING
PREPARED……………………………………………………………………………………….
……….. 34
POOR
LECTURES……………………………………………………………………………………….
………… 35
QUESTIONS TO ANSWER, THINGS TO THINK ABOUT, AND EXERCISES TO PERFORM……………………….. 35
A CHAUTAUQUA ON TIME MANAGEMENT……………………………………………………………….. 36
THE ROLE AND IMPORTANCE OF TIME
MANAGEMENT…………………………………………………………. 36
AN
ASSESSMENT……………………………………………………………………………………..
………….. 37
A METHOD FOR TIME
MANAGEMENT……………………………………………………………………………. 37
RECOGNIZE TIME AS A RESOURCE
…………………………………………………………………………. 38
UNDERSTAND YOUR CURRENT TIME ALLOCATIONS ………………………………………………………..
38
KNOW HOW MUCH TIME RESOURCE YOU HAVE AND HOW IT’S SPENT ………………………………….. 39
PLAN AND RE-ALLOCATE YOUR TIME RESOURCE ………………………………………………………….
40
MAINTAIN TIME MANAGEMENT HABITS
……………………………………………………………………… 40
STAY IN
CONTROL………………………………………………………………………………………..
…… 41
QUESTIONS TO ANSWER, THINGS TO THINK ABOUT, AND EXERCISES TO PERFORM……………………….. 42
A CHAUTAUQUA ON
YOU……………………………………………………………………………………… 43
KNOWING
YOURSELF……………………………………………………………………………………….
……. 43
THE VIEW OF A STRANGER; A WAY TO KNOW YOURSELF BETTER………………………………………….. 44
ACQUIRING PRACTICAL
SELF-KNOWLEDGE…………………………………………………………………….. 45
KNOWING YOU AND HOW YOU LEARN
………………………………………………………………………….. 48
KNOWING WHEN YOU NEED HELP AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT ……………………………………………….
49
THINGS THAT WILL GET YOU INTO TROUBLE
……………………………………………………………………. 51
APPENDICES AND
NOTES…………………………………………………………………………………….. 52

1
INTRODUCTION
–
CHAUTAUQUAS FOR
FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING STUDENTS
You have decided to set a direction for your life, to study engineering. It will be tremendously
rewarding; it will also be difficult. Beyond being smart, success at this study requires commitment to
academic activity, sturdy self-reliance, organization, and new self-knowledge. This is especially true in
your first year. The purpose of these notes is to offer you advice; and the advice is meant to help you
succeed in your first year of engineering.
My purpose is accomplished only if you read these notes; and you’re more likely to read them if you to
know why I wrote them. Who am I, after all? And why should you pay any attention to advice from
me? I have taught and worked with engineering students for 25 years. For the last seven of these
years I have paid close attention to the successes and failures of first year students. I don’t mean
successes and failures in the abstract. I mean individuals succeeding or failing in their first year of
engineering. You need to know how individuals failed or succeeded in their first year in engineering—
that’s why I have written these notes.
What did failure mean? It meant individuals, still wanting to be engineers, who hadn’t learned the
basics of engineering very well. So they got very low grades; barely passing. They found it hard to
understand the more advanced material studied later and had a difficult time raising their grade point
average in subsequent years. Even worse, some were not allowed to return. They flunked out after
their first year. How did it happen? It was almost never true that these first year students weren’t
smart enough. It was always something else. Something that could have been fixed or changed or
acquired or abandoned or moved just enough to make the difference. Evidently, being smart was not
enough.
What did success mean? It meant individuals learning the basics of engineering and getting good
grades. They didn’t find it easy, but they did find it possible, even inevitable. I observed these
students to be actively engaged in their education. They understood that they were beginning a new
stage in life, and leaned into (as it were) the difficulties of stepping from high school to college. They
took responsibility for their learning in their first year of engineering education. Being smart was not
enough.
Observing those successful students, talking with them, and thinking about them and what they did,
makes me certain I’ve seen the things that must accompany smartness. These notes come from
thinking about these things and working out how to explain them. They also come from my conviction
that what those students did, you can do. But, as Mark Twain said, there are few things in life more
irritating than a good example. So I know it isn’t enough to point out the “good students.” You are
already eager to duplicate their performance—simply pointing to it doesn’t help. You will ask, “I know
what they did, but how the hell did they do it?” So I offer advice.
I understand that giving advice is a risky business, especially when I need to reach across a
generation and, in some cases, a gender. There are few things as easy and gratifying to a mature
adult as unhinging the jaw or loosing the pen and “giving advice”—self-important, ill-considered, and
vague—delivered in senile rapture to a captive and sullen group of the young. That’s what I remember
thinking anyway, when I got advice. And though you might have a similar thought in your head at this
moment, it’s advice that I offer.
As a beginning college student you’ve gotten a mountain of advice. I wager that most of it was rubbish:
vague and unhelpful. Well meaning, certainly, but rubbish all the same. Let me guess: “Be all you can
2
be!”, “Reach for your dream!”, “Study smarter”, “Use your full potential.” What does any of this mean,
anyway? I don’t know, you don’t either.
Is this stuff helpful? No, it pelts you with a slogan; an inspirational lazy shorthand. It’s cheer leading.
“ALL THE WAY DOWN THE FIELD, GO!” Yes, yes, we need to go down the field, “but how the hell do
you do that?” Cheerleading may help the crowd enjoy the game, and athletes report that they get a lift
from it, but it doesn’t help them win the game. It encourages, but doesn’t give you a method. We even
cheer ourselves on: “Gees, I’ve got to study this stuff harder”, “I’ve got to get organized”, “Damn! I’ve
got to start these assignments sooner.” You are very likely to mutter such things to yourself early in
your first semester. But this too is rubbish, unhelpful rubbish.
Cheering will not help you be a successful student; good coaching might. Good advice is good
coaching: but only if it’s particular, long-considered, narrowly to the point, shows how something is
done, and comes from experience. I have written these notes to be so. They are also spare and blunt.
If they impress you as negative, remember my purpose is narrow: to help you, not to make you feel
good. Perhaps “help you” sounds suspiciously like “good for you”, provoking a memory of dinnertime
urging to eat your Brussels sprouts. But just making you feel good doesn’t give you the tools I think
you need to have a successful first year. You can probably use the advice of a coach. That’s why I
wrote these notes.
You’ll find no pictures, no cute clipart, no popular characters from the comics pages. Just words and a
few graphs. I hope you’ll read carefully.
The form of coaching I use is a chautauqua. In 1874 J. Vincent, a Methodist bishop, and L. Miller,
Thomas Edison’s father-in-law, formed a summer “assembly” for teachers. Held on Lake Chautauqua’s
shore in upstate New York, it was educational, inspirational, recreational, and an immediate success.
Famous teachers, travelers, orators, and public figures lectured on topics helpful and interesting to
teachers. Other camps in other places were established,(0) and they were all called Chautauquas.
Traveling Chautauquas also appeared, moving from town to town, bringing orators and public figures to
the people who couldn’t travel to the permanent Chautauquas. And so, the name gradually came to
mean not only the place, but also the extended series of lectures themselves.
A Chautauqua, then, is an oration, (1) a demonstration, a performance, or a lecture, delivered to a large
audience. The orations are often informal and usually practical—instruction in a process rather than a
theory. They are simply presented, hoping the audience derives some benefit. But there is no special
effort to assure that that happens. Benefit is up to the listener. And that is the case here, so I call
these small presentations chautauquas.
I wrote these chautauquas for you as a first year student; next year you will need different advice. I
have abused Italics; they help give sentences the dynamics of speech. I have used a two-dollar word
only when a 25-cent one wouldn’t quite work. In that case I offer a definition, since I assume it isn’t
your habit to bring a dictionary to a chautauqua. I have assumed you’re motivated to become an
engineer, or at least seriously considering it; and so offer no attempt to attract you to this profession. I
have assumed you’re not so hurried or so jaded (2) that you can’t consider carefully what you read
here. But rather, I assume that you can find bits and pieces that are helpful, even if the rest doesn’t
apply or isn’t attractive. And finally, I have decided to risk lingering over what you may consider to be
obvious, and so risk being a scold.(3) I do this because I know the stakes in this enterprise of yours
are very large.
Stripped of ornament, these chautauquas are about
setting goals that have the right size and order,
recognizing and acquiring the skills you need to achieve these goals, and
3
knowing and directing yourself so you can use these skills.
I have several reasons for making these three activities chautauqua topics. I have explicitly linked
them to student success. I have seen their power and observed how common they are in the lives of
successful first year students. I have also observed the mischief caused by their absence. They are
not just helpful, they are necessary for success, they are elemental. And, finally, these three activities
are rather “mechanical;” they are performed by following a series of steps—a recipe, if you will. So
they are activities within your reach, things that any first year student can do. But please don’t confuse
mechanical with easy.
So being smart is not enough; you need to engage in these three activities: setting goals,
acquiring skills, directing yourself. To do that requires understanding, courage and discipline.
These chautauquas can help bring about understanding. Courage and discipline you must provide:
they are the most important components. Let me emphasize that these three activities are usually not
things first year engineering students are doing when they start college. Successful first year
engineering students eventually engage in them—but it takes a while.
You are tempted to dismiss these things as well understood; disappointed or annoyed about so much
being made of the ordinary. Perhaps you expect “secrets.” But the ordinariness of goals, skills, and
self-knowledge is the reason for their power. Consider ordinary breathing; everybody does it. Yet any
singer, horn player or runner will tell you that breathing must be studied, thought about, and practiced.
For these people, simple breathing must become breath control, an integral part of their art. And so it
is with goals, skills, and self-knowledge: you must study them. If there is any secret, it is to fathom (5)
the power that comes from studying these things, making them extraordinary, making them an integral
part of your art. It is “art” because your education is a creative act.
Summary
Summaries are interesting. They are suppose to be a useful condensation; “putting things in a
nutshell” as the figure of speech has it. A summary can be a powerful test of clarity. If a few
sentences can summarize a long harangue,(7) and if these sentences sustain careful thought and
scrutiny, then things are clear. If the sentences aren’t supportable, then either you’re being woollyheaded
or your author writes rubbish. I will indicate such summaries in the text with the symbol S.
This is the Greek letter sigma, equivalent to our ‘S’, and the universal mathematical symbol for
summation.
S It is possible to explicitly link three activities to first year student success: setting right-ordered
and
right-sized goals, recognizing and acquiring needed skills, self-knowing and self-directing. These appear to
be not just helpful, but necessary. In addition, they are straightforward to perform, within the reach of
all.
Though not common in beginning students, with understanding, courage and discipline, these activities come
to characterize successful first year students. Therefore, goals, skills and self-knowledge are the subject
of
these chautauquas.
4
A CHAUTAUQUA ON GOALS
–
SETTING GOALS IN THE RIGHT ORDER AND WITH THE RIGHT SIZE
Introduction
You are about to change—coming to college does that. Two of the forces that will shape this change
are your behavior and the passage of time. By “change” I mean a modification of the person you
are—your character. “Your behavior” is useful shorthand for what you give attention to, how you invest
your resources, and what you do. So although it’s true that time passes and you change, it is more
accurate to say this: how you behave determines the person you become. This chautauqua
describes how to be active in this process of becoming.
Not all aspects of your character are a result of your behavior. This chautauqua deals only with some
aspects that are. So I omit a consideration of the secret gamble of chromosomes from which you get
your eye color, your predispositions, and the physical traits that partly define you. About these you
can do nothing. I also pass over those things that come into your life unbidden and unexpected. You,
like anyone, are subject to Fortune’s blast or blessing. But these things are usually small and usually
rare. So this usually true: how you behave determines the person you become.
So what determines how you behave? Goals do. The goals you have are your end-points, defining the
things you want. They always determine how you behave. Always. Recognized or not, evident or not,
good or not; goals determine how you behave. And so, subject to outside forces, the goals you have
determine the person you become. You are your own project.
A few goals are imposed, not chosen. These are usually biological, as with the goal to eat and the goal
to reproduce. These, and a few other important goals, are “wired in”; they are there to keep you and
our species alive. All your other goals are chosen; you either set them or adopt them. The difference
between setting and adopting goals is important enough to warrant a mild exaggeration in their
description.
Setting a goal is a clear and thoughtful action, a willing directive of behavior. This implies the
consideration and rejection of other goals and the commitment to strive and attain the goal that is set.
Adopting a goal is a passive occurrence: a goal acquired without much reflection, seeping in (as it
were) from the circumstances, influences, and forces that surround and act on you. The default
condition is adopted goals, and without thought and intervention on your part, adopted goals direct your
behavior.
Perhaps you think that only a modest fraction of what you do is anything so mechanical as goal driven;
most of what you do seems too spontaneous, accidental, or “natural” to be classified this way. Such a
thought only means you don’t recognize the goal, or have so long ago forgotten it that its influence is
now unrecognized, misunderstood, even denied. Some behaviors become repetitive, almost automatic.
You are no longer conscious of the goals that initiated them. That is, you have habits.
Setting goals for first-year engineering
Not all goals need to be set. But as you start the study of engineering, some must be. What you need
and want to accomplish in your first year in engineering requires that you behave in new ways. This
requires new goals. This chautauqua deals with new goals and new behavior. Some new goals may
5
seem foreign, “unnatural”, or inappropriate. This often simply means that they do not arise by default
and are not customary for you. Please don’t confuse new with inappropriate.
As with many young people, you have many goals that are simply adopted; some good, some bad.
Bad goals have initiated behavior that now works directly against success in your first year of
engineering. And some of this behavior is habit. You need to identify this behavior and change it.
This takes some careful thought since circumstance usually has its way with you very quietly. The
chautauqua on knowing yourself says more about recognizing old goals and behavior, and changing
them if they work against your success.
Of the goals you recognize as yours, it is revealing to determine which have been set and which have
been adopted. It is even more revealing to pick a few seemingly spontaneous or “natural” activities and
to try to identify the goals they help you achieve. Partying on Thursday night is an activity with goals
that are easy to identify. But watching television instead of working on an assignment is more difficult
to understand. What possible goal is served by dodging homework and watching the tube? There is at
least one, and by this chautauqua’s end you should recognize it.
That you understand, recognize, and use the relationship between goals and behavior doesn’t mean
you believe you’re a robot or machine. You’re not. It does mean you recognize the place and power
of choice and that you are dependent on it. You are.
These chautauquas are about your intellectual life during first-year engineering. And so, within the
range of goals that determine the person you become, this chautauqua focuses on setting goals that
affect your intellectual growth and determine the intellectual person you become. You are tempted to
think that you needn’t set goals since The College of Engineering has done that for you: you have a
curriculum to follow, courses to take, grades to acquire. The appropriate things will simply “happen to
you.” This is only weakly true. These goals are large and abstract; they lack value to you because the
you is missing. A goal to simply “take the courses” is far too passive and vague. Here, and elsewhere
in these chautauquas, I advise you to be active. Do not float and drift in the water like a cork, paddle
in a direction of your choosing.
S Within the limits of fate and genetics, time and behavior determine the type of person you become. And
how you behave is always determined by the goals you have. Now some few of your goals are imposed, as
by biology; but most are either set actively or adopted passively. Like most young people, most of your
goals are adopted. But now you need to exercise the power of choice and actively set goals.
Setting goals with the right scope
It turns out that just “setting goals” isn’t always enough. If the goal is too grand, has too large a sweep,
is too far away, it is surprisingly ineffective; however important it is. It has a weak influence on how
you behave because it’s not clear what you should do to achieve it. Very large goals, unsupported by
detail, have a scope so large that they are little more than slogans. And, as we agreed, we’ve sworn off
slogans. So—curious to say—a goal can be very important and yet ineffective.
So you need to break a large goal into the smaller goals that comprise it. That is, find its componentgoals.
These, in turn, may be too large to help you, and so their component-goals need to be
determined. When do the component-goals finally have the right scope? When do you stop? A good
test is whether they are more like a recipe than a slogan. Loftiness transforms to grittiness as small
goals with the right scope are broken out of big goals. These are much more potent in directing your
activities than the large goal. Component-goals are small enough when they directly affect the way you
spend a week. A week is a good span of time to work with. This helps you track your progress, and, if
necessary, helps you understand exactly how you missed a goal.
6
This goal-defining process blends into or becomes weekly planning. That is, eventually goals become
what you write in your calendar or planning book, they become small or short-term objectives. Notice
too, that the order in which goals need to be accomplished becomes apparent. You can see that
achieving the small goals is achieving the large goal. This is how large and important goals are
accomplished. There is no other way.
I cannot overstate the importance of the explicit linking of daily and weekly activities to the large goals
in your life. That the link exists is unquestionable; how you behave determines the person you become.
If you know that your days and your goals are linked, you are more likely to control your days. It will
be easier to get the small things done because you will know you are getting the large things done. An
adage (8) of Benjamin Franklin applies: “Take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of
themselves.” We could say: “take care of the days and the semesters will take care of themselves.”
An example of setting goals
By way of example, let’s find the component-goals of a large, long-term goal you already have: BECOME
AN ENGINEER. These component-goals will define appropriate activities for having a successful first
year in engineering. As component goals are determined, let’s write them down so that hierarchy and
order are clear. We’ll use indenting to show this; the components of a goal will be written underneath it
and indented, like an outline. The smaller the goal, the more it is indented. Let’s call this structure a
goal map.
This example will also show how the process is applied to other goals. Please follow the details. I hope
not only to show you how goals are transformed into planning, but at the same time introduce the three
most important goals for first-year academic success:
LEARN FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING BASICS AND SO GET GOOD GRADES
BECOME CERTAIN, CONFIDENT, AND COMMITTED TO WHAT YOU’RE DOING
BEGIN TO ACQUIRE THE HABITS OF A GOOD ENGINEER
To start at the beginning, we can say that being an engineer means doing engineering. That means
having an engineering job. To get a good engineering job you need a degree in engineering. So we
start with a goal map like this:
BECOME AN ENGINEER
GET A GOOD FIRST ENGINEERING JOB
OBTAIN AN ENGINEERING DEGREE
Perhaps your plans are broader. Perhaps your music talent requires attention, or you see a blend of
engineering and business in your future, or you want to deepen your spiritual life, or you see a career
in one of the armed forces. Then you might have one of these goal maps.
BECOME AN ENGINEER BECOME AN ENGINEER
GET A GOOD FIRST ENGINEERING JOB GET A GOOD FIRST ENGINEERING JOB
OBTAIN AN ENGINEERING DEGREE OBTAIN AN ENGINEERING DEGREE
OBTAIN A MUSIC MINOR OBTAIN A BUSINESS MINOR
BECOME AN ENGINEER BECOME AN ENGINEER
GET A GOOD FIRST ENGINEERING JOB GET A GOOD FIRST ENGINEERING JOB
OBTAIN AN ENGINEERING DEGREE OBTAIN AN ENGINEERING DEGREE
WORK IN A CAMPUS MINISTRY BE COMMISSIONED IN THE NAVY
7
These other goals are shown on the same level as OBTAIN AN ENGINEERING DEGREE Presumably they are
equally important and you want to achieve them at the same time as you get your degree in
engineering. Are there other important goals you want to achieve during this time? Likely. One of the
things I suggest you do at the end of this chautauqua is to add them.
But these goals are still too remote. Picture OBTAIN AN ENGINEERING DEGREE written in your planning
calendar at the beginning of each of the 128 weeks you’ll spend earning your degree. It’s hardly
helpful. Let’s continue the component-goal process, focusing on obtaining a degree in engineering.
What is done with this goal, you will need to do with the others; the process is the same. Though not
complicated, this goal defining can take some thought. Let’s take the goal OBTAIN AN ENGINEERING
DEGREE and establish its component goals. The first step in obtaining an engineering degree is doing
well in your first year. So this part of the goal map becomes:
BECOME AN ENGINEER
GET A GOOD FIRST ENGINEERING JOB
OBTAIN AN ENGINEERING DEGREE
SUCCEED IN THE FIRST YEAR IN THE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
This makes sense. Although there will be many goals between succeeding in your first year and
getting your engineering degree, doing well you first year is essential and immediate. But it’s still too
lofty, too large. You can’t take something like “succeed in the first year” and have it affect the way you
spend a week. You need to make it more specific, find its components.
You must admit that it’s easy to see that from SUCCEED IN THE FIRST YEAR IN THE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
is a component goal of OBTAIN AN ENGINEERING DEGREE. But as you continue to work down to smaller
component-goals it gets more difficult to get them right. Determining the component-goals of SUCCEED
IN THE FIRST YEAR IN THE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING requires giving “succeed” a practical definition. This
requires some careful thought. I believe that three of the component-goals of success in your first year
are these: learn engineering basics, develop confidence and commitment, and acquire good habits.
There are other component-goals, equally important, but I believe these three define the academic part
of “succeed.”
So your goal map becomes:
BECOME AN ENGINEER
GET A GOOD FIRST ENGINEERING JOB
OBTAIN AN ENGINEERING DEGREE
SUCCEED IN YOUR FIRST YEAR IN THE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
LEARN FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING BASICS AND SO GET GOOD GRADES
BECOME CERTAIN, CONFIDENT, AND COMMITTED TO WHAT YOU’RE DOING
BEGIN TO ACQUIRE THE HABITS OF A GOOD ENGINEER
Notice that the three component goals we’ve added are on the same level; they are equally important.
But are these three component-goals small enough? Not yet. SUCCEED IN YOUR FIRST YEAR IN THE
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING sounds like a slogan, but LEARN FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING BASICS AND SO GET
GOOD GRADES is a little better; it has more grit. But this, too, needs to be broken down into
componentgoals.
While doing that, it’s important to take care with the words; they must accurately reflect and
guide thinking. For example, the first component-goal is LEARN FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING BASICS AND SO
GET GOOD GRADES The “so” makes it clear that good grades result from learning engineering basics.
8
I want to discuss engineering basics, certainty and confidence, and good habits in enough detail to
make it clear where these goals come from, and how you apply the same care and reasoning to find
their component-goals.
S You set or adopt goals. Adopted goals seep in from the circumstances around you, set goals result from
thoughtful acts of choice. To be successful in your first year you need to set goals, some new to you. Set
goals are often too big, and so you need to find the component-goals that make them up. This process is
continued until component-goals have sizes that you can use to help plan a week’s time. An initial
application of this process gives three immediate goals for first year success: learn the basics, become
more
confident and acquire the habits of an engineer. Each of these needs to be divided into finer goals.
First goal of first-year success: LEARN FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING BASICS AND SO GET GOOD GRADES
The most immediate academic requirement for a successful first year is learning engineering basics.
This gives you the background required for more advanced courses, the confidence required to
continue studying, and the grades to show that you have mastered the material.
You may think that the goal to SUCCEED IN YOUR FIRST YEAR IN THE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING has the
component-goal GET GOOD GRADES. No—grades, good