Motivation!

Academic Fears was a strategy I looked at to help me with motivation. The reason I am either motivated or un-motivated usually comes from fearing the outcome of an assignment. By looking at my academic fears, the outcomes and what I needed to do it helped me get motivated and know what I had to do in order to succeed.

What I did to complete this was look at my math and econ materials. I had test in both of them and needed to get motivated to study for each. I filled out the chart of my academic fears for math which were not understanding the concepts and failing or doing poorly on the exam. The worst outcome for both of these would be getting a bad grade on this test and it hurting my overall grade for the course. The best outcome would be understanding the material to use in the future and doing well on the exam to help my grade and do well. I decided that the action needed to be done was that I would go through all of my lecture notes very carefully, go in for office hours, read the textbook and spend a considerable amount of time doing practice problems. I decided this because all of these things would help me understand the material helping me doing well on the test, accomplishing both of my fears. This got me motivated to start to take these steps on. I day by day did each task by going over each chapter one by one and spending time practicing. I also went into office hours and asked questions and cleared up material I was confused about. This helped me a lot and I went into the test feeling confident.

I also did this for my ECN 203 quiz. My fears for this quiz were similar to my math test. I feared that I would not understand the concepts which were important for not only this test but for the final and doing poorly on this quiz. My worst outcome would be that I did badly on this quiz. The best outcome would be that I understood everything and did well on the quiz. The action that I needed to take in order to accomplish this was to go over the terms day by day and use strategies like LINKS to help me learn these definitions. Once again I was very motivated to get my best outcome possible so I followed the actions I planned out and felt confident going into my quiz at the end of the week.

I think that this is a great strategy for a visual and kinesthetic learner like myself. It lets you write out everything so you have a visual aid to help you know what you need to do in order to do well. This can work in any class with any type of assignment because it helps you get motivated to see what you can really accomplish. I think there are only positives to this strategy and I am going to use it in the future when I need a push to start and do assignments.

Motivation!

Motivation!

What motivates you? What makes you put in the effort to achieve things?

I have never really had much trouble trying to motivate myself to do school work. I am quite lazy and sometimes would prefer to sit on my bed and watch television, but I am sure that this could be said for many people. I may not spend an excessive amount of time on assignments, but I will never skip assignments intentionally or simply not prepare for an exam. I consider myself to be a highly motivated student. I am process-driven in the aspects of organization and study preparation, optimistic, and persistent. I am not too much of a risk taker and I do put in a valid effort to the standards of my ability.

What is an external motivator? It is something other than yourself that motives you.

What is an internal motivator? A motivation that gives you a sense of accomplishment. It would be doing a task for your own personal gain.

What can cause motivation? A consequence or a reward is a good reason to have motivation. If something is very undesirable, most people would give their best effort to be sure it does not happen. For example, I would fail my math class if I don’t get an A on the next exam, the consequence would be my motivation. A reward would be when I was young I got 5 dollars per A on my report card. The reward would be 5 dollars. If someone desires a result, they will usually make sure that it is reached. Simple things can cause such motivation, which causes some to try much harder in school and life.

When I was younger I got good grades because my parents wanted me to and I would get restricted from fun activities if my grades were poor, so I have always found them to be important. I am personally motivated to attend college because I am hoping to pursue a goal for knowledge. I have not chosen a major yet, but I desire to gain as much knowledge as I can about my area of study and help others with the knowledge that I have. I am motivated for internal as well as external reasons. My motivation is simply reward, which could be determined in the future as a goal. I plan to work in either the social sciences, psychology or business. I hope to be able to help others with my work so my motivation is the people’s lives that I can affect and help.

I am motivated for different reasons in each of my classes. Some classes my motivation is to attain a high average, fulfill requirements, personal happiness and to pass a required class. In CLS 105 I am trying to use this class to teach me the skills to raise the grades in my other classes, as well as to get a good grade in the class in order to raise my GPA. I would like a high GPA to be able to get into any major that I desire without difficulty. For CFS 388, I am interested in this area of study so my motivation is to see if this class is something I would be interested in pursuing, which is an internal motivation. MAT 222 is my hardest class and I am doing terribly. I need to pass this class with a decent grade so that I won’t haveto retake it, in hopes of keeping my GPA from being pulled down. I strongly dislike PHI 107, so I will use this to keep my grades up for my GPA and fulfill a requirement. REL 120 is interested but is also motivated by keeping my GPA up at this point. Ski Team is one of my PED classes which I enjoy and I only use it for personal satisfaction. I don’t necessarily desire to be the best skier on the team, but I do enjoy the sport. I am motivated to get a good grade by simply having fun! I am very motivated in my schoolwork and can find many reasons to be motivated for any task.