Continuing Academic Success
Christina Lambert
GEN/201
12/09/14
Maureen Parker

Continuing Academic Success Academic success is achieved by setting goals, applying critical thinking skills, using ethical behavior, and utilizing all available resources. Everyone’s career goals should include academic success, as it is necessary to move forward in your career and achieve your life goals. By setting goals students will be able to better motivate themselves to succeed in school and with their career. During my first few assignments, I have learned a lot about the tools necessary to become successful as well as how to apply them to my everyday life.
Setting goals was able to help me as I now have a clear expectation of what I want to accomplish and how to get it done with maximum efficiency. I want to be able to advance my education by passing all my classes and move forward in my job to be a store manager. By setting goals for myself for school I was able to complete all of my assignments on time, and make sure I gave the best quality work I could. I have taken what I have learned from my classes and also used it in my workplace, as the writing process was able to teach me how to write my reviews better and communicate more efficiently with my coworkers. In order to accomplish this I used my critical thinking skills that I learned early on.
Critical Thinking Critical thinking is the process we can use to determine whether or not something is right or wrong. By being a critical thinker, a person can effectively make decisions based upon truths and verified information. In order to be a good critical thinker at work from now on I will verify the information given, and research all possible aspects to be sure I make the correct decision. Using Critical thinking to complete my work for school I will be able to determine things like whether not I have plagiarized material, used proper ethics, and communicated well with others. There are many sources available in the University Library and the CWE for students to use to help with this. In the University Library there is even a plagiarism checker so you could submit your work to be sure you have not accidentally plagiarized. Because plagiarizing in others work would be unethical and result in getting kicked out of school and failing and classes.
Ethics
“Ethics involves the study of moral issues and choices. It is concerned with right versus wrong, good versus bad, and the many shades of gray in supposedly black and white issues.” – Kreitner, R., & Kinicki, A. (2004). Organizational Behavior. To me ethics means the standards you set for yourself, how you define your own behaviors and morals. Using the Ethical Lens I was able to see what my own standards were as well as what I need to improve upon. The fact that I have unrealistic role expectations is what I need to work on. “Because you rely so strongly on the virtues associated with various roles, you run the risk of developing unrealistic role expectations. You will tend to rely too much on the virtues associated with a particular role, forgetting that individuals are fallible regardless of their role. Even those who live fully into the virtues required in their role may not be able to resolve all problems.” (Ethical Lens Inventory, University of Phoenix) This means to me that I expect things to get done exactly how they are supposed to when they are supposed to. For example, I would expect one of my associates to complete their work lists by the end of their shift, but realistically it could be busy and they might only get one or two tasks completed. Communication and Negotiation While it may take awhile to develop the skills needed for success in college, your career, or life in general there are many steps you can begin taking to get moving in the right direction. Being able to negotiate and communicate are some of those skills, as you will need them to work and compromise with others. Communication is key, if you cannot communicate properly with instructors, classmates, or co-workers information can be lost and things can be misunderstood. When using proper communication it is wise to make eye contact and follow-up and with pertinent questions or reiterate what the person was telling you. This is called active listening, and the shows the person you are speaking with that you were truly paying attention and care about what they were talking about.
Negotiation is used by every person on a daily basis, it is important in order to reach our goals and get cooperation from others. We can use negotiation to get what we want while still being able to compromise and take into consideration the feelings of others. (Lewicki, Saunders, Minton, Barry 2004). This is true in a work environment as you’ll need to compromise constantly with co-workers in order to get work accomplished. Negotiating can also come in handy when doing a group project for school, especially when you need to divvy up tasks for project. I have learned that negotiation and communication go hand in hand; if you actively listen to either coworkers or classmates then you have better ammunition to use when negotiating.
Motivation
Motivation is a major factor for the success of any student. There are four sections to motivation that are talked about in length; they would be academic self-efficacy, attributions, intrinsic motivation, and achievement goals. (Linnenbrink, Pintrich 2002). “Attribution theory, which focuses on attempts to understand why events occur, is another important line of research on achievement motivation (Graham & Weiner, 1996). Similar to other motivational theories, research on attributions did not focus initially on academic achievement. However, Weiner’s (1985, 1986) research relating attributions to students’ behaviors and success in academic settings has done much to further an understanding of how attributions relate to learning in school.”- Linnenbrink, Elizabeth A. Pintrich, Paul R.
I highly believe that motivation is pertinent for most students to continue their education, if a student is not motivated they will not likely succeed, as they will not have the desire to continue their education. Depending on the situation motivation can change with the environment, which allows students to be motivated in many different ways. Because of the constant change of motivation teachers and other educators can adjust their motivational techniques to the student to get the best outcome. Motivational techniques can also be used by students in order to create a support for each other, to keep each other and going and help each other succeed.

Conclusion I have learned much from the first few weeks of my classes, and I will use what have learned to continue my career and move forward as a student. I have very succeeded in using active listening and communication to better understand my coworkers and classmates. Taking these classes is help me to learn that continuing your education plays a major role in advancing your career and gives you a feeling of accomplishment. I plan on continuing to use all the resources available to me in the University Library such as this CWE, tutorials, plagiarism checker, and E books in order to succeed. I will also keep in mind that I am an active learner, which I learned in the ethical lens inventory, which means I will take advantage of the workshops offered so I can learn hands on. I have set my goals and plan on continuing my academic success in order to reach them, and will try to do my best, classmates to reach their goals as well.
References
Kreitner, R., & Kinicki, A. (2004). Organizational Behavior (6th ed.). : The McGraw-Hill
Companies.
Lewicki, Roy J. Saunders, David M. Minton, John W. Barry, Bruce (2003) Negotiation: Readings, Exercises, and Cases, (4th ed.) The McGraw-Hill Companies
Linnenbrink, Elizabeth A. Pintrich, Paul R. Motivation as an Enabler for Academic Success 2002 School Psychology Review