Goals are Sexy

People who have goals are more attractive than those who don't. I don't mean 'attractive' in a hot and bothered kind of way I mean attractive in that I want to get to know those people in a friendly way. I've found that people who utterly lost, don't have goals or motivation to do anything aren't the kind of people who I enjoy surrounding myself with.

I was dating a boy just before leaving for the Peace Corps. We had a been together during our college years and we had met in Vermont. I remember watching our relationship fall apart, and in the end I broke it off a couple of weeks before leaving for Africa. There are many reasons why we broke up, but the main reason was he became very unattractive to me. His physical appearance hadn't changed much, but his attitude had. I realized after too many boring days in Africa with only myself to speak english too, that the reason why he became unattractive was his lack of motivation and goals. He had gone to college and during his senior year something changed. His goal of graduating was about the only thing he had, and then after that, there was nothing. After graduation, zero goals. After he graduated he still had zero goals. I watched as he just lived, day after day filling the file cabinets in his mind with the same memory. Keeping the status quo.

There is nothing wrong with floating through life. Having no direction is different than not having goals. To not know how to reach a goal is perfectly acceptable, but to not have goals at all is unattractive. Goals are attractive to me because I have goals. I have a life that I see for myself and I'm working towards it. A goal doesn't have to be strictly professional or career oriented. It could be anything. 'I want to hike to Appalachian Trial' or 'I want to build my own house'. It doesn't have to be a lot of goals, just one is perfectly fine.

I feel that people who have zero goals, even if they are traveling around, changing their situation, the people they see, are stuck. They are just stuck in the same rut and they're spinning their tires, which of course only digs the hole deeper. This is how I saw my ex when we broke up. Surrounded by nothing but his own dwindling motivation.

I don't care how old you are, how comfortable you are with your life or how incompetent you think you are. Remember: goals are sexy.

Classes then and now

My undergrad school was the University of New England, a small school where the Saco river meets the Atlantic Ocean. Coming from a very small high school in rural Vermont I remember being excited that I could meet a new person every single day and not run out of people to meet by the end of the year. Of course, that was freshman year and people dropped out. Going to class was definitely a chore. Most of my friends were fresh out of High School, like myself and yes they knew they wanted to go to college but didn't have the motivation to really buckle down and do well. Undergrad was unfortunately a $30,000 a year social scene. Yes I went to class, yes I did study, and yes I at the end I got a GPA I was proud of, but something was missing, life experience.

Directly after college I didn't think I would be going back to graduate school. I thought that I was done with school. After 17 years straight of school I was done. I needed a reason to go back, and I just didn't have one. Instead I had drive to check out the world. I went to Africa, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Wyoming, California, Montana, Alaska, North Carolina, and probably a few others I forgot to mention. I realized that I really enjoy outdoor environmental education.

After finding a career I was passionate about I found that I was lacking some education, psychology and education courses. I knew I had to go back. I found motivation to return. My courses are coming much easier for me now. I've found that I want to go to class instead of feeling like I'm supposed to go to class. I truly am excited to see what I'm going to learn that day. I also have noticed that my other classmates are equally engaged. Its refreshing to be surrounded by people of like interest who have the same motivational level that you do. Unlike other careers I probably don't need to go back to school to work within my field. Myself and my classmates choose to come back, because we wanted to, that has made all the difference.