The Fuel of Motivation

The last few weeks I have been lacking a drive to finish my fall semester with flying colors. I started to get strong feelings of homesickness and all of my motivation for school was running dry. Motivation is defined as a force that moves you from just thinking about something to doing it. And the reasons that my motivation was running low was due to my academic fears. I was thinking of the worst outcomes within my courses and I was allowing those fears to determine my actions within my classes. This was a problem as it made me defeat my own goals for success. Having no motivation turns you into your own worst enemy essentially. This lack of motivation caused me to even slack on my weekly chores that I normally take care of with ease. My room was a mess and I still haven't put up my CLS 105 work up in my room to remind me of the goals that I wished to achieve this semester.

For this week's motivation strategies I used the Academic Fears strategy in both my MAT 295 class and my CHE 106 class. This strategy makes you list out your fears in the course and then write the worst outcomes that could happen because of those fears. It then requires you to list the best possible outcomes with the class and ways you can achieve them.

MAT 295 Academic Fears

CHE 106 Academic Fears

I found this strategy to be very helpful, because it serves as an evaluation of your FEARS and list ways to combat them. This strategy was something new to me because I have never thought about my fears in a pro-active fashion. In the past I would know exactly what my fears were, but they would just sit in the back of my head. Ignoring them just made problems worse within my classes and caused me to have doubt and lack of confidence. 

My room also felt the effect of a lack of motivation because I found it hard to take care of chores that I normally did with ease! I would always spend one day out of my week to make sure that my room stayed clean so that I could locate my things easily and so that it would be easier to clean the next week. But due to a lack of motivation, I got careless and slacked off on all of my weekly chores.

Messy Room Before

Messy Room Before #2

Something needed to be done! After using the academic fears strategy I mentally applied its steps to the state of my room. I thought about the outcomes of having a messy room and why it was best to avoid them. In this case it would be not being able to locate things I needed for class, or losing important things amongst the clutter that surrounded my room. Those outcomes were things that I feared, and the only way to prevent them was to clean my room.

Organized Room

Organized Room with CLS work on wall

After hastily cleaning my room, I realized that I still hadn't put up my CLS 105 work that I spent so much time on all semester. Not having them in a place that I would constantly see them was like not having them at all. I decided to put them up on the wall next to my bed so that every morning I would wake up and see them. My Fritter Finder was also up there to remind me of my schedule and where I had free periods of time to work towards avoiding my Academic Fears.

I really enjoyed using this strategy because this topic was something that I really needed to work on as a student ant Syracuse University. I realized that my motivation was so low after doing this strategy, and using it has now put me on the track to reaching those goals I set for myself at the beginning of the semester. I recommend using this strategy not only for your coursework but also for anything in your life. It serves as a great way to evaluate yourself based on your fears, and causes you to realize that you CAN prevent the worst outcomes from happening. This strategy allowed me to see how I was limiting myself based on my fears and think of ways to overcome them. Now that I have found the right way to reach my goals I feel like this...