3V; Just Do It.

       Running five miles on the treadmill to feel satisfaction or studying diligently for an exam for a result of a good grade. Often times, we have motives to push ourselves to complete tasks and hurdles in our everyday lives. We all want to be successful, we all need drive, and all would like to be seen by others as motivated. But, where does this come from? I was very interested in this topic so I furthered my research to get some conclusions. Some interesting points I came across included our biological makeup and the simple feelings of thirst or hunger. These internal feelings essentially motivate us to eat or drink so that we are provided with energy to keep going. Another theory that came up was Freud’s psychoanalytic theory which states that we have two drives called “Life and Death drives.” These drives simply reach the goals of helping us to survive, or prevent our destruction and the example used was that we go to school believing it will help us to obtain a good job, or even a spouse, which I found intriguing. All in all, to me, motivation would be the reasons or underlying forces for why we do things.

http://www.swiha.edu/articles/198-motivation-where-does-it-come-from.html

Extrinsic Motivation;

This type of motivation often times uses rewards for getting through different events such as participating in a tournament and receiving a trophy at the end. As discussed in class, it can be part of a fixed mind set because just providing effort will get you the reward. What I find interesting about extrinsic motivation is that there can be a negative side to it. A punishment can also enhance our motivation and drive to do better.

Intrinsic Motivation;

One of the hardest things about this type of motivation is that it has to come from yourself. You are the only one who can motivate yourself to accomplish self-satisfaction. Creating measurable and appropriate challenges with progress we can easily see can be a jump start in creating intrinsic motivation. I like this type though because when you want to do something and you want to apply yourself, it is so much easier to accomplish and do well. For instance, lately, I have really been trying to push myself in classes and I found that lately, I have been thinking about the material we learn outside of each class more and more. This allows me to really understand and soak up the information so I can further analyze in future assignments or classes.

How can balance be achieved between the two types of motivation? Which type of motivation is more crucial and helpful to our own lives?

New words I stumbled upon this first full week of classes included tampered and variance. I had a prior understanding of the word tampered and found in the dictionary that this verb means, "to meddle, especially for the purpose of altering, damaging, or misusing." However, I was not aware of the alternate definition that included, “to engage secretly or improperly in something.” The second word variance is one I came across in Statistics and means the square of the standard deviation, but in the dictionary, it is a noun meaning, “the state, quality, or fact of being variable, divergent, different, or anomalous.”