by: Nicoline Hansen
On Monday, January 28, Parkland College hosted a vision board event for its students, which gave them an opportunity to envision, visualize and set goals for the future.
A great atmosphere, a strong smell of popcorn and relaxing music filled room U140 on Monday, when the Center for Academic Success hosted their vision board event. This was an event intended for students to determine and set their goals, whether goals for their academic career, health or everyday life. With magazines and other supplies provided, all the students had to bring was their creativity.
The idea behind the workshop was to provide the students of Parkland College with an opportunity to make their goals visible in a creative way. Melanie Whited, the event organizer, shares that “A vision board gives permission to dream, and to start the next small step towards accomplishing our goals.” The event was built around answering questions such as who am I? What are my goals? and How do I want to achieve them?
One of the students who stopped by the event was Shelly Richardson. After seeing a poster advertising the event, Shelly decided to go as she had time to kill before work. “I thought this would be really beneficial. The art aspect of it is really soothing, plus I also get something to look at and remind myself what I want to accomplish this year,” Richardson shares. Some of her goals were beauty and fitness related, while others were smaller goals such as reminding herself to eat breakfast every day.
Another student who attended the workshop was Chyna Robinson, a nursing student here at Parkland. While Chyna shared some of the same goals as Shelly, such as working towards better health through fitness, more internal goals were also worked into her vision board. Robinson wishes to reach her goals of happiness and greater self-esteem while working towards a nursing career; a traveling goal was also added to the board.
While it might seem like Robinson has quite a few goals she wants to achieve, it is far from impossible. Academic coach, Jessica Jackson, is a great example of this. Jessica has a lot of experience when it comes to creating vision boards. In fact, she likes to create one every year. “One year I put on my board that I wanted to travel abroad and purchase my first home. I thought there was no way I could accomplish both in one year,” Jackson states. However, after her vision board motivating her to take small steps towards her goals each day, both these major goals were accomplished. Jessica ended up both traveling to South America and closing on her first home within the same year.
One thing that helped Jessica accomplish her goals was to share her vision board with close friends and family. By doing so, her friends and family became accountability partners on her goals. Though a vision board makes your goals visible, additional help from loved ones can work as motivation to take the next step that will bring you closer to your goal.
The vision board workshop ended up being a huge success both for the students and the academic coaches. “What I learned from this workshop is that we have some really motivated and creative students at Parkland,” Melanie Whited shares. These vision boards will not only help students to achieve their goals but will also serve as valuable information for Melanie and her co-workers. “This information allows us to strategically think of ways to come alongside the students we serve and help them achieve these goals,” Whited adds as her final comment.
