You might think that you know exactly what you want to do with your life and where you want to go once you finish college. Or, like many students, you might be struggling to balance being in college, working, and having a satisfying personal life. You might be highly motivated to do your best in college, or you may be unsure about why you’re in college at this time in your life. It is possible that as you discover more about yourself and your abilities, your purpose for coming to college will change.

Let’s stop and think about what “purpose” means. A firefighter who enters a burning building with people trapped inside has a clear purpose: He has been trained to get those people out of the building safely. He is determined to fulfill the commitment of his job. The reason to go into the burning building is clear: to accomplish the objective of rescuing the people.

These words—determination, resolve, goal, reason, and objective—all relate to purpose. What will the training and education that you get in college teach you to do? How will succeeding in college help you succeed in the job and life that you envision for yourself? What do you feel determined to be, to have, and to accomplish? As you consider your answers to these questions, you’ll get closer to understanding your purpose for being in college and setting the right goals to achieve this purpose. The more you keep the answers to these questions in the front of your mind, the more purposeful you will feel in what you do, and the more motivated you will be to do it. In this course and in this book, we’ll help you answer questions about purpose, and we will equip you with strategies to help you achieve your goals.

Another concept that we stress in this book is “resilience,” which is an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change. Virtually every college student faces an occasional disappointment, whether it’s a poor grade, an unsatisfactory performance on a stage or in an athletic arena, or the end of a relationship. Students who are resilient—who bounce back quickly from difficult situations—will be more successful in college and later in life. We encourage you to develop your own resilience as a tool you will use now and in the future.