Stars & Steppingstones

This week we learned about “Stars and Steppingstones”.  This assignment was to sketch out a plan for my life.  The stars are my goals and the steppingstones are the smaller goals to help me achieve the star goals.  So, I chose my star goals as: get my bachelor’s degree, become a teacher, write a book, serve a couple mission with my husband, and send all of my children to college. 
My steppingstones to achieve my bachelor’s degree are: do homework early or on time, take classes every semester until I graduate, ask questions or for help, prepare for class, and balance my time.

My steppingstones to become a teacher are: finish college, intern or TA at a school, lookup qualifications for certification where I am living, take the training and test to get my teaching certificate, and apply for teaching jobs once the kids are out of the house.

My steppingstones to write a book are: continue brainstorming ideas of books, continue writing pages in ideas already started, do not overdo it and be burned out on writing, start with outlining characters, settings and background info, set specific page or chapter goals once I start a book, search into on submitting books for publishing, and send to publishers.

My steppingstones to send all my children to college are: finish college myself as an example, have finances to help assist if needed (encouraging high grades and activity in extra curriculars for scholarship opportunities), research schools with my children but encourage BYU, pray fast and discuss with family, & help kids apply to multiple schools.

My steppingstones to serve a mission are:  be well off financially to support us, prayer daily together, scripture study together, attend temple together at least monthly if not weekly, and put in our papers.

My ethical guardrails for these stars and stones are: keep moral standards strong for ourselves and as examples to the kids, and balance my time in all things so that God and family are not taken over by anything else. 

Lastly, this week we watched and read a speech by Randy Pausch.  He was able to achieve so many of his childhood dreams due to the way he lived his life.  He led his life to get his dreams.  Nothing stood in his way that he did not figure out a way to get over or around it.  “Brick walls are there for a reason:  they let us prove how badly we want things.”  I love that quote from his last lecture he gave. 

From watching his last lecture, it made me think about my dreams.  As a child, I had some crazy dreams.  Wanting to become a dentist was high on the charts at one point.  It definitely is no longer near any charts as that is something that does not interest me at all and would not bring me any joy doing on a regular basis.  However, once I was in high school I wanted to become an Accountant.  Sometimes I still think about doing that and I know I can achieve that goal if I still want to.  I just need to focus on education right now in order to be able to obtain that. 
I feel that dreaming is very important.  Dreaming helps lead to some great goals in life.  Without dreams I do not think that there would be many people who aspire to what they want to. 
I look forward to next week in this course and what I will get to write about on my blog.