Challenged to Learn? Love to Learn? Motivation to Learn
By Jessica Murphy
EDI 15A Psychological Perspective: Teaching & Learning
School of Education
Long Island University, C. W. Post
September 18, 2008
After today’s class I felt extremely motivated, which was definitely a welcome feeling. From the very beginning of the semester up until now I was completely overwhelmed with the amount of work I had as a whole, because it was the most amount of work I’ve had since high school and I was a little nervous about what the outcome would be.
When I was in high school I quite literally did homework every waking moment of the day that I was not at work or at school from my very first day of freshman year up until the end of my senior year. I brought my work with me everywhere. I was even doing homework on Christmas and Thanksgiving while at my aunt’s house with my family. It felt like it would never end because there was always another AP practice test to take or another project to do, another test to study for. No one I knew could understand why there was so much for me to do, and it worried them because, at least once a year, I would miss at least a week of school for what my doctor called burnout (I would work myself so hard that I would crash and get very sick with no clear cause or specific illness and so there were no antibiotics or anything for me to take). When I finally graduated high school though, my hard work allowed me to transfer in over thirty credits from the classes I took in high school.
As a result of this, I felt that it was best to take a relatively light course load my first semester and then take it from there. This decision turned out to be somewhat bittersweet however, because although I was enjoying not having as much work as I did in high school, I was incredibly bored and did not feel even remotely challenged enough in my classes. These feelings carried over to my second semester, and my friends, family, and coworkers were shocked that whenever they asked me how tough college was I always replied that it was not nearly as challenging as high school. Well now, after the course load I took this semester, everyone is telling me that I jinxed myself because it was back to the extreme amounts of work I had in high school.
At first I was terrified by this. It wasn’t that I felt incapable of doing the work, it was the fear that I’d end up burning out again, or that I wouldn’t have enough time to get things done, or that I’d spend another holiday holed up in a corner with my homework, or that I’d be losing much needed and greatly valued family time. The fact that I had been to this place before, and seen the consequences, made me fearful of going there again.
Today’s class however really helped to change my mentality. As I started taking notes I began to remember how much I love educational psychology and how eager I am to learn and how much I want to become a teacher, and this began to translate into the way I thought about my other classes. I finally started to feel that I could get all the work done without losing myself in the process and my anxiety level (which was well beyond tremendously high at the start of class) began to slowly but surely decrease.
I realized that I had been to this place before and that I should use that knowledge as a guide instead of as a source of fear and anxiety, and this made me feel empowered. Now I am excited to take on the challenge and to push myself, because I realize that this is the situation in which I have been able to thrive in in the past and so there’s no reason to believe that I can’t thrive now when I‘m older and hopefully wiser than I was then. I’ve done it before, and so I can do it again.
By Jessica Murphy
EDI 15A Psychological Perspective: Teaching & Learning
School of Education
Long Island University, C. W. Post
September 18, 2008
After today’s class I felt extremely motivated, which was definitely a welcome feeling. From the very beginning of the semester up until now I was completely overwhelmed with the amount of work I had as a whole, because it was the most amount of work I’ve had since high school and I was a little nervous about what the outcome would be.
When I was in high school I quite literally did homework every waking moment of the day that I was not at work or at school from my very first day of freshman year up until the end of my senior year. I brought my work with me everywhere. I was even doing homework on Christmas and Thanksgiving while at my aunt’s house with my family. It felt like it would never end because there was always another AP practice test to take or another project to do, another test to study for. No one I knew could understand why there was so much for me to do, and it worried them because, at least once a year, I would miss at least a week of school for what my doctor called burnout (I would work myself so hard that I would crash and get very sick with no clear cause or specific illness and so there were no antibiotics or anything for me to take). When I finally graduated high school though, my hard work allowed me to transfer in over thirty credits from the classes I took in high school.
As a result of this, I felt that it was best to take a relatively light course load my first semester and then take it from there. This decision turned out to be somewhat bittersweet however, because although I was enjoying not having as much work as I did in high school, I was incredibly bored and did not feel even remotely challenged enough in my classes. These feelings carried over to my second semester, and my friends, family, and coworkers were shocked that whenever they asked me how tough college was I always replied that it was not nearly as challenging as high school. Well now, after the course load I took this semester, everyone is telling me that I jinxed myself because it was back to the extreme amounts of work I had in high school.
At first I was terrified by this. It wasn’t that I felt incapable of doing the work, it was the fear that I’d end up burning out again, or that I wouldn’t have enough time to get things done, or that I’d spend another holiday holed up in a corner with my homework, or that I’d be losing much needed and greatly valued family time. The fact that I had been to this place before, and seen the consequences, made me fearful of going there again.
Today’s class however really helped to change my mentality. As I started taking notes I began to remember how much I love educational psychology and how eager I am to learn and how much I want to become a teacher, and this began to translate into the way I thought about my other classes. I finally started to feel that I could get all the work done without losing myself in the process and my anxiety level (which was well beyond tremendously high at the start of class) began to slowly but surely decrease.
I realized that I had been to this place before and that I should use that knowledge as a guide instead of as a source of fear and anxiety, and this made me feel empowered. Now I am excited to take on the challenge and to push myself, because I realize that this is the situation in which I have been able to thrive in in the past and so there’s no reason to believe that I can’t thrive now when I‘m older and hopefully wiser than I was then. I’ve done it before, and so I can do it again.
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