Smart Goals In Criminal Justice

Prior to being enrolled in this class, I had never heard of SMART Goals before. After watching the video, I sat at my desk and thought about setting a good goal for me. I have to admit, I have never been good at setting goals for myself. It might be because I don’t like to set myself up for failure, or that I tend to stick with things that come easy to me. After multiple attempts of filling out the SMART Goals Worksheet, I decided that I would set a goal that could further my career in law enforcement. I want to get my Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice before I go out into the field on patrol by the end of 2017, so that I will score more points on my sergeant’s exam, making me more competitive for promotion selection.
Once I figured out what my goal was, I spent hours looking at the worksheet and watching the Setting SMART Goals (Ed Muzio, 2010) video. I wanted to make sure that my goal would fit under the five different categories of SMART. I have been told by many sergeants in the past that if I wanted to promote in the department, I needed to have a Bachelor’s Degree and that you …show more content…
Right now I am assigned to the county jail where I have worked for the past two and a half years. I have had plenty of time to work on my degree, but I kept putting it off. If I had used the last two years to work on my degree I would be done by now or very close to finishing the program. I pulled my name off the Patrol Deputy List, The day I decided to sign up for Ashworth College, so I could put all my efforts into my schooling. Trying to work on school and patrol training would not work out in my favor. Patrol training is very intense; my free time outside of work would be spent finishing reports spending time with my family. I would not be able to focus on my studies and would set myself up for failure. So taking my name off the list Patrol list to me is the only way I would be able to achieve this