Metadata
Title
Develop academic purpose
Category
courses
UUID
836b77ce0ecd48628217dc75e2390d1f
Source URL
https://www.york.ac.uk/students/support/success-at-york-toolkit/purpose/academic...
Parent URL
https://www.york.ac.uk/students/support/success-at-york-toolkit/purpose/
Crawl Time
2026-03-20T07:22:07+00:00
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Develop academic purpose

Source: https://www.york.ac.uk/students/support/success-at-york-toolkit/purpose/academic/ Parent: https://www.york.ac.uk/students/support/success-at-york-toolkit/purpose/

Academic purpose involves defining the goals you have in relation to your degree.

In other words, what do you want from your degree, career-wise?

Videos

Video

How to choose a career based on your interests

In this video, a Career Coach from Indeed walks you through some advice for identifying a career you will love. She bases it on three main questions: What's important to you? What do you want next? What should you do now?

https://youtu.be/9pvWJEYhfvc

Video

Why the secret to success is setting the right goals

In this TED Talk, John Doeer talks you through 'Objectives and Key Results' - a goal setting system that's used by the likes of Google, Intel etc. to execute big goals and move towards success.

https://youtu.be/L4N1q4RNi9I

Video

How to figure out what you really want

Ashley Stahl takes to the TED Talk stage to walk you through how to identify what you really want to do in life and the steps you can take to get you there.

https://youtu.be/bRtBHF-WPpM

Podcasts

What do you actually do?

The University of York Careers and Placements team presents the podcast 'What do you actually do?' where students talk with people in various careers fields about what their job actually entails, and how they got there.

Your Career Kit

Student podcast, Employment 4 Students, talks to top industry professionals about their career journeys and advice for students starting out in the professional world.

Further reading

Why ‘finding your purpose’ matters – and four ways to find yours (The Conversation)

Next steps

Now you have explored resources to help with developing a stronger sense of academic purpose, the next step is to complete our activities to help you set some goals.

Activities to develop purpose