personal goals
...o become a recognized expert in the area of Information Technology (IT). I believe any motivated student can earn favorable grades by doing the course work, asking questions and reading the material, but I want to do more than that - I want my fellow students and my instructors to recognize me as an authority in the Information Technology field. This goal is deeper than just personal pride. I have the ability to achieve this expertise and I think it would be a shame and a waste of my abilities if I did not work hard and push myself to reach it. Throughout my educational career, I feel that I have been an underachiever; I have not performed to the best of my abilities. My goal at the University of Phoenix is to break out of that mold and excel, as I believe I can. Hand in hand with the goal of being recognized as an expert in my chosen field is my second goal: the ability to effectively communicate with my peers and clients by improving my oral communication skills and becoming more confident when speaking to groups. In my opinion, many educated professionals, IT professionals especially, suffer from a lack of communications skills. I am not referring to communicating with peers, what I am referring to is the ability to communicate with lay people, coworkers, or management, who are not necessarily educated in technical subjects. I think IT professionals have a tendency to use nomenclature and "tech speak" that is not easily understandable by the people IT professionals should consider clients, people they have to interact with on a day to day basis to do their job well. My goal is to be able to communicate equally well with both my fellow IT professionals and non-technical coworkers, managers, and clients. I believe I already possess excellent communication skills, my objective in this case is to further improve upon those skills, specifically in the realm of oral presentation. I get nervous when faced with speaking to groups of my peers, I do not have the confidence that I should and I get worried that I will make a fool of myself. I think the only way to improve this skill and gain confidence is through repetition; I need to prepare extensively and volunteer to be one of the first speakers for presentation projects. In other words, face my fear and conquer it. The third goal I set for myself is to make a conscious effort to meet people and make as many friends in my career as I can....