Students’ learning and performance in academic settings is affected by a great many variables. These include (among many others) goal orientation and work avoidance goals. Goal orientation refers to how students define competence (in terms of learning material vs. demonstrating success to others) and how this motivation is valenced (whether they are oriented toward the possibility of success or failure). Other students may not focus on any of these possibilities, instead being motivated solely by a desire to do as little work as possible. The first goal of the present study was to validate the four-factor model of goal orientation, and to see how these orientations relate to the goal of work avoidance. The second goal was to determine how each type of goal orientation relates to students’ use of self-handicapping behaviors (strategies which provide built-in excuses for failure, thereby preserving self-esteem even at a cost). The participants in this study were community college students, who are an under-studied population in the extant literature. Results supported the validity of the four-factor model of goal orientation, and confirmed the existence of work avoidance as a distinct goal. Self-handicapping was negatively correlated with work avoidance and unrelated to the other goal orientations. Work avoidance was negatively correlated with mastery-approach goals and unrelated to the other goal orientations. Implications of these results are discussed, along with recommendations for future research.