A New Semester: A Time to Reflect on Goals!

Welcome back to the new semester! I hope that this new year and semester will bring positive opportunities and new experiences! The start of the semester, for me, is a time to realign my goals and reflect on my priorities for the upcoming four months. This week, I’ll outline a few of these goals, especially around meeting my accessibility needs. If you have goals for yourself, this is a great time to make them before it gets too busy! I’m not one to set “New Year’s Resolutions” but do appreciate taking this time for reflection. Last semester, I focused my blogs on self-care, tips for talking to professors, my new experiences with counselling, and ways to find community on campus. It was also one of the most difficult semesters I’ve had during my time here at U of T – both academically and mentally. I tried to balance seeking accommodations along with my personal life and academics. I am finally a student registered with Accessibility Services, and this new addition to my identity as a U of T student is what I am focusing on for this term! I’m so proud to say that over my time here, I have made long strides to improve my health. That’s why this semester, I’m slightly shifting my focus to:

• Using my accommodation requests from Accessibility Services for the first time and seeing how they benefit my learning, and
• Finding a better balance between academics, extracurriculars, and personal time.

I try not to set rigid quantitative goals such as “obtain x average” because I don’t always have full control over how my upcoming semester will go. I prefer to focus on setting goals that are more qualitative and make me feel good. For example, I want to focus on learning new ways to take notes in class or improving my time management, which will ultimately help me enjoy my classes more and approach studies with less stress!

I was recently able to complete my intake appointment with the Accessibility Services office, and though this was a daunting step for me, I managed to do so with support from my professors. I was surprised about how easy the process was and how my advisor was able to assist me without overwhelming me! In terms of accommodations, I have already started to reach out to professors about my needs – including sending in my letter of accommodation. I’ll start to sign up for test accommodations as soon as I can as well – I want to give myself enough time to do this since it’ll be my first time using the online registration. For those of you that may need help with this, remember there are Peer Advisors daily from 10am-12pm & 2-4pm in the Accessibility Services Spadina location. I’m hoping to share my journey on how my accommodations are going this semester with all of you!

This term, I will be using these goals to lead my blogs and I am excited to write about de-stigmatization, assistance with the workplace, community, and my learnings from counselling. Do you have goals for this term? Let me know in the comments!