Motivation - College

I have a question...basically in need of help. College has begun and I find myself in a hole. A huge friggin hole. It seems as if the only way to get out is to dig farther down. Not working.

I haven't been on for awhile. School, work, and the pursuit of happiness have taken over.

Many of you have been in this situation before. I have asked about college and the future on many different occasions, but now its the real deal.

I find myself lacking one thing. Motivation. I signed up. Paid. Did the dirty work, but now I have zero motivation. I've looked around and read that motivation is the hardest thing to gather during college. Many people face it like an arch nemesis.

My goal is to get my MBA. I'd like to think of myself as very disciplined, but only when there is motivation involved. The right "catch". In these cases there isn't anything remotely alike.

I feel like a broken, battered old man. My wings are gone and I just find myself skipping class for all the wrong reasons.

So whaddahell is up?



Sincerely,
confused

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We're soldiers. Soldiers don't go to hell. It's war. Soldiers, they kill other soldiers. We're in a situation where everybody involved knows the stakes. And if you're gonna accept those stakes... You gotta do certain things. It's business, we're soldiers. We follow codes... Orders.

Well the transition in itself is hard work! So maybe you need to relax for a few days and do something that you enjoy. This weekend you should strongly consider getting yourself a scheduling calendar in order to keep your classes straight. Start planning when you will study, etc. And even make sure you plan some relaxation time as well.

I have a similar problem as you, except I start off the year all gung-hoe then all the excitment wears off as soon as midterms come around. But I have to keep reminding myself why I am in school in the first place...to learn. A part of learning is discipline. So you need to get some discipline in your daily routine. This is where the calander comes in. Before long you will be in a regular routine and it won't be such a chore.

Colleges are supposed to offer services for people like you, who are having troubles getting motivated. I would strongly consider checking them out at your school. These type of people I am referring to are called learning strategists. So maybe you can look in your course calendar for "learning strategist". Or maybe you can ask the student services who to contact. There is also likely to be group meetings about this sort of thing since most students feel a lack of motivation.

Keep telling yourself that you are there because you want to be,, not because you are forced to be, like a lot of the other students you will come into contact with. You are roads ahead of these other people because you know what you want out of this education! A lot of the young students come into college with absolutely no idea why they are there, aside from the fact that their parents told them they have to.

Lastly, congratulations on your acceptance to college!

College is like a full time job. You need to get up early in the morning and study, even on days you don't have classes or lectures. Then you read and study and do whatever it is you do until a given time in the evening, like 6 pm. Then you're free and can do what the hell you want, and it will feel great because you've been working hard all day. Then on some days you're free the whole day, preferably on saturdays and sundays. The weekends will feel like waterholes, like an oasis in the desert. And then when your studying is giving you results on exams and grades, you will feel even better about yourself. And that's when motivation will come back and studying will actually become more fun.

That's how it worked for me anyway...

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

For me, I just think about the future. I hate all the crappy piddly a** jobs I've had recently. I try to focus on how much of a better job I'll have once I graduate. My pay will increase substantially and I will actually enjoy what I do at work. Being in the rut that I am now keeps my motivation going because I hate my job. I refuse to do this the rest of my life, therefore, I do the best I can with my studies!

Don't you have deadlines? That was pretty much my main motivation in college. I used to work at night a lot (with the help of a lot of caffeine).

I used a healthy mix of ProPlus and fear.

My initial motivation was employment, followed by pride and a faint air of desperation, then back to employment when the post-grad kicked in. It's amazing how a mortgage makes one study.

I went through stages at Uni where I couldn't be bothered to go to lectures (sometimes for long periods) but was fortunate enough to charm my way through any flack.

Looking back on it, I was a dick who nearly threw it all away...

Monday is a new day. Have a chat with some of your tutors, they might be able to suggest a different path within the same institution if they think your problems stem from your area of study - I changed my Major completely after my first year and concentrated 100% on a subject I had only studied for a few hours a week up to that stage. Don't let things slide to the degree that I did.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

You were able to charm your way through lol. When I skip lectures I am so down on myself for not going that I am down right suicidal...to do with spending all this money, not putting 100% effort into it, and the guilt that comes after I almost flunk an exam. I feel miserable. Therefore, I MUST GO!

It helped having a lecturer/mentor who wanted to mother you and believed you were homesick when, in fact, you'd missed a lecture because you'd been playing a gig until 3am.

Sorry Pam, in the vain hope that you read this, a decade and a half later.