College Admissions Essay: My Goals In Life

Dreams, everyone has some sort of life ambition or goal that they would like to have in their life. As children we look at the whole world with eyes filled with wonder and ambition; yet, as we age pursuing one’s own goals often gets put on the back burner. Life happens, people get married, and have kids and the hope of landing that dream career gets increasingly distant. We tell ourselves that we will get to it, but often we fall short of our own expectations of ourselves. As humans, we have the capacity to do and create wondrous things. Knowing of this capacity gives us the desire to go out and get what we truly want; however, as we begin pushing towards our desires we run into conflict. Life has a special way of creating obstacles and barriers

I have a dream of getting in a Doctorate of Physical Therapy program. However, I was not sure how I was going to make this happen. My first couple years at university, I did not know what I wanted. I was content getting by. I was not failing courses but my grades were not necessary something that I could say that I was proud of. My mantra was the old saying “C’s get degrees” and although C’s might get a Bachelor’s degree they will not significantly improve one’s chances of getting into a respectable graduate program. Due to my own foolishness, I had placed a huge barrier to my goal before I even began reaching for it. I knew I needed to begin retaking some courses to get my GPA up higher before I graduate from Utah State

I had taken Basic Behavior Analysis, Advanced Behavior Analysis, and Behavior modification in the past. These classes made it clear that behavior, one’s actions are malleable. In order to change my poor studying habits, I need a new method of evaluating my academic success. One that also held me accountable for my grades. So I took what I had learned from these courses and created a unique type of behavioral contract. One that could also be used to evaluate if I was taking the steps necessary to succeed in my courses. I call these behavioral contracts Behavioral Strategies. It works similar to other behavioral contracts the main difference being that these contracts are meant to be self-mediated, with the strategy functioning as an evaluation form as