A presentation of AIT.
Oh, this stupid door.
May I help you, Rebecca? I can't get the door open.
Thanks, Mr. Green. You're welcome.
That was our principal. I guess I didn't make such a good
impression, but I was determined to get in
determination means feeling you have a firm purpose, a goal you mean to
accomplish no matter what. Have you ever been really determined about
something? We
moved when I was in 4th grade. It was hard getting used to a new
school, but I was determined to make new friends
fast. At first I wasn't too crazy about taking
music lessons. It was my mom's idea. But
then when I started doing real well on my trumpet, I was
determined to get good enough to join the band. Last summer I
was determined to make enough money from babysitting to buy my own CD
player. It took a long time, but I did
it. It feels great when we accomplish
our goals, but sometimes we may not be clear on what our goals are
or what we need to do to make them a reality. Let me tell you a story about a
couple of kids I know.
Goodnight. See you tomorrow. No, bye, bye, good
job today.
Good night, Joy. See you tomorrow.
How could this happen to me? Joey, I know you had a lot of great ideas for
this project. You told me, but I can only grade you on what you put down on
paper. I understand.
Need show. Can't stay. Go
homework. Everybody's got homework, man. So what?
For a while, give me some other time, Ricky, OK?
You're making me look bad. Oh how much I stood up
for you already with these guys. Yeah, you told
me, so get it together. It's not like you've
got anything else going, right? Yeah.
It may not seem like it, but Joey and Mark were facing the same
problem, and that problem had to do with
determination. That's tough. How Ricky
start hanging with those guys anyway? I don't know.
It's not like they're so bad or anything. I mean they have fun, but they get into a
lot of trouble. Yeah, tell me about
it. But what am I supposed to do? I mean, you
don't know what it's like. No, you don't.
David, you've got a lot of things to do. I mean, you're
smart, you're on the hockey team, you're in band. What
do I have? Well, what do you want?
I mean, besides a mountain bike? Come on.
I don't know. I wish you could talk to my cousin Daniel.
He was in a gang for a while, but now he's
amazing. Once he sets his mind to do, watch out,
it gets done. He really knows where he's headed.
Later on, Mark shared some of the problems he'd been having and
David told the rest of us about his cousin Daniel, so the group decided
to invite Daniel to come after school and talk about his experiences.
Daniel is a senior at our local high school. He's on the track team and has a
job a couple days a week after school. He puts in a lot of effort
keeping his grades up, but aside from that, the main
place Daniel puts his energies is photography. He takes
photos for the school paper and has stacks of photos of people,
places, events, everything. I'm keeping a kind
of photo diary of my family. Here's
David. Let me see that. I'm a member of
the school photo club so I can use their equipment, different kinds of
cameras, darkroom facilities they even have video cameras.
I'd like to know how to operate any camera made but my goal is to be a
newspaper photographer. I asked Daniel to answer some of
our questions about how he learned to set his goals.
When David said the class wanted to interview me, I thought, great, let's tape it.
I've already got the camera recording. Who wants to go first? I will.
You're on. Did you always know what you want to do? I mean, being a
photographer, was that always your goal? Uh uh, I was
clueless when I was your age. I was in a gang.
I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't have any sense of direction, but then one day my
dad took me to a football game only I wasn't paying attention to the
field. I started watching this guy taking pictures of the action.
And I thought that's his job. I wanna do that
so I found where I wanted to go but I still didn't have any idea how to get there.
I got discouraged and I told myself be real you're never gonna be a
photographer, but I kept thinking about it and I talked to one of my teachers
and he said, why not? Find out what you need to do to get
where you want to be? So I did and I learned how to set goals
for myself. How did you do that? I mean I have a goal
to do well in history but that doesn't mean I'm getting A's.
Been there OK, well, the first thing I did when
I was setting goals for myself, I really thought about what I was good
at my strengths and then I thought about my weaknesses where I
needed to work harder. The first step in
setting your own direction is deciding who you are and where you are.
One way to make this clear is to write down what you like, what you're good at,
what you want and what you need, and then write down what you don't
like, where your problems are and what you need to work on. My
goal was to become a photographer, so I had to overcome one basic
weakness. I didn't know how to use a camera.
But you know what if I decide my goal is to be rich and famous.
Look, maybe you're guitarist for a world-class rock band.
A rock star, huh? Well, you need to take a look at whether or
not this is a realistic goal based on who you are and where you are.
You have an ax. What?
An ax, a guitar, you play guitar at
all? No, that was just a daydream.
Everybody daydreams, am I right? Yeah, at first when I
was thinking about being a photographer, I was really just daydreaming.
I'd imagine myself like this superstar photographer
it was fun but it didn't seem real but then I found out about the
kinds of jobs photographers really do and how technical the work is.
I like paying attention to detail and I've always been good with my hands so that was
a fit and once I got a camera it was something I could work out on my
own it started feeling real I could really see
myself as a photographer one day. You can turn your daydreams
into a vision of what you want to accomplish the kind of person you want to
be the goals you set for yourself will have a big influence on what
your future will be like. I could see it. It was
gonna take around 1 year to learn the basics about photography. In
5 years I wanted to be working on my first job as a photographer.
In 10 years my goal was to be a news photographer.
10 years? I can hardly even think about 10
days from now. Right well if you don't have
an idea yet what you're gonna do when you grow up? Well, that's not the main thing.
You can have long term goals that aren't about what you wanna be when you grow up your
goals can be about what you hope to accomplish like getting an A in history.
Yeah, doing well in school is your long term goal, but to do
that you need to do better in history, right? Right, but
I'm not getting very far with it. Well Jury, what do you think the problem is?
Well, I'm doing good in math, but history, I don't know.
My teacher says I have great ideas, but I don't get them down on paper.
I know what I want to say, but it's hard when you have a long report and lots of other
homework, so I get frustrated sometimes, you know. It's
just too much. Well, you've got a short term goal getting
an A in history, but you need to figure out what specific steps you'll have to take in
order to get there. Here's an example I made this plan
every day I'd spend one half hour on photography. I'd read about it
and study. Then I'd practice I
check out cameras from the club and go out and take photographs of my own. Then
later I'd learn how to develop them in the dark room at school.
Daniel Joy and the class talked about short term
goals and what plan of action Jury needed to set up to reach her
goals. She decided that going from a C to an A all at once wasn't
realistic, so she set new short term goals. She
decided she'd get a B by the end of the semester, and then she decided
on some specific things she could do to help make her goal a reality.
My plan buy jewelry. First thing is I have to spend more
time on my history homework. So my plan is to stay for
30 minutes each night. The second part of my plan is to
turn in my reports on time. Because that might be hard. The third part of
my plan is to go in once a week for extra help.
Oh, plus part 4 of my plan. I won't do homework
in front of the TV anymore. Remember you've
gotta stick with your plans that you have for achieving your short term goals.
It's like there's a checklist in your head every day you check something
off and you're one step closer to where you want to go. That's what I'm gonna
do my short term goal is to not mess up a hockey practice
anymore. Whoa, how can your goal be not to do something? I
don't think it works that way. What do you mean? What I mean is your goal
has to be something positive, something you can do. So
what's your short term goal to make the travel team. What do you need
to do to get there? Well, I'm a pretty good hockey player,
but sometimes I just get carried away. I think I can do
something like make a killer shot, but lots of times I
blow it. So what do you think you need to do to get better? I
need to work on my shooting so I can score most of the time.
OK, David, you've got your short term goal now get specific. How are
you gonna get the job done? It's tough. I
practice on my wrists and slap shots a lot more, and that means
dropping something else. And that probably means getting up
real early in the morning. It might be
easier for David to stick to his plan if he had someone to practice with him.
It always helps to get your friends or family members involved in your goal.
Tell them what you're doing and why, because their support can really help you to
succeed. You OK?
Yeah, I guess it's just that I gotta meet Ricky later on.
Well, don't go. I can't just keep running away all the time.
Thanks. Kids loved it. Thank you. It was fun.
Well, you guys ready? All right.
Bye guys. Bye Rebecca. So Dean,
what did you do when you wanted to get out of that gang you were in? Well, it took a while
and I lost some friends, but I made a point of not being where the action was,
and I kept myself real busy all the time. That's my problem.
There's nothing to really do, you know. Then you better find
something. Why would I be? I mean, what's the big deal if I don't?
Because it's easy to do nothing, but then that's what you end up with.
So what do you like to do, Mark? Well, actually, I promise
you won't laugh. We'll laugh if it's funny. OK,
OK. Well, I like to sing. Well, that's cool.
My choir director at church said I have a good voice and she taught me how to read
music, so there you go, get more involved in your music.
But I don't know what to do. Hey!
Later, oh man, what about your school choir?
It's mostly girls. You won't mind in a few years. The
point is you have a starting point. See where it takes you and make a
plan.
Well, that's my story about determination and here's one more thing for you
to think about goals are about choosing who you want to be,
so remember, think big, start small,
act now.
Yeah.