I never liked SMART goals much. Organizational behavioural research indicates that goal-setting, while useful for ensuring accountable completion of simple tasks, is a hindrance for completing complex tasks – especially as a team. Call me high-achieving, but rigorous goal-setting is not my thing; I believe in doing what needs to get done when the time comes, and employing a general sensibility about it.

At least this formula works for me. All the same, I understand the usefulness for some people of getting specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely things done – it’s just not my cup of tea. Besides, I think it’s impossible to accurately conceive of the future at an implementation level.

But it seems strange to me so many Sauder students have either a) their path very clearly planned out, or b) have no idea what is in their future to the extreme extent of not knowing what is held in the future of the school structure they have ascribed to at all. Baffling as this may be, I think a greater emphasis needs to be placed on students’ futures at school, rather than their present. I think the career support network we have needs more focus, rather than, say, blind academia; even in first year.

Be specific as to how, for example, I will be doing, rather than have.

At Sauder, this week is election week for first-year rep. It’s nice to see so many candidates vying for the position and ultimately bearing ultimate responsibility for leadership in enhancing our first-year experience – but politics, as always, (and this is purely that) remains contentious.

I like to think about how the campaigns at our school would be run differently if the candidates had first learned about making business plans, and about marketing strategy; you know, making sense of marketing data, and preparing a general plan as to how they will approach this daunting challenge of selling themselves. I like to think of these elections as business interaction stripped of all its numerical aspects, leaving nothing but human interaction; I like to think that what’s left is marketing, as a naked, unifying concept of business.

In political trade, the product is what a person chooses to represent, and the consumer offers to “buy” into said product by agreeing to vote for the candidate. An intangible product is being sold for intangible values, and the only chemistry left between the parties is purely association by marketing.

For example, some of the problems faced by campaigns, like candidates being equidistant from constituents, are universal plagues, regardless of it being a national or in-school campaign.

Qualitatively speaking, this is also the most interesting, relevant case-analysis I can imagine to demonstrate the ropes of critical thinking to first-years – a concept so rarely approached in Sauder, and so close to the heart of and intertwined with business (in the same way marketing is, of course).

If you take a look in front of the Sauder building you’ll see some pretty well-kept rows of plants and grass fields. If you stayed and watched, you’d see how much work is actually required not just to make but to upkeep these plots of greenery. That is to say, if you think about where your tuition goes walking around campus, you’ll see that you pay a premium for sitting in a lecture hall listening to Profs drone on and on about irrelevant topics – for an education.

But I’m not being fair, am I? I mean, is that what you really come to university for? Comm 101 is a survey business course; for example, in finance, we talked about the price value of money. If you think about it, the money you spend now on your education could be worth countless dollars down the road, but then what is useful to you? Can you quantify the usefulness of knowledge, speaking fairly? What, to you, is useful knowledge? I think students are too focused on the “useful content” of their textbooks, and not making learning matter; students who come to university to learn should learn to make that learning useful; not hoard grades/degrees. Maybe then, they’ll learn to make the most out of every dollar, and for the rest of our lives, that might be a useful education.