Academic Fears and Exploring Rewards by Andrew Zelin

This week in CLS 105 I experimented with two memory strategies, academic fears and exploring rewards. Because this is a motivational week the memory strategies are not course specific. I chose to use these two strategies because motivation I feel my motivation is my greatest asset. Thus, I would like to try out more than one strategy. Also, because I am a visual learner, organizing information in boxes usually works very well for me.

The first strategy I experimented with was the Academic fears strategy. The first step I took to implement this strategy was I created a chart with four main boxes and one title box above each section. I named the title boxes academic fears, worst outcome, best outcome, and action needed respectively. In the academic fears section I ranked my fears from worst to bad. Worst being 1. Here were my results. 1. Underscoring on an exam, 2. Procrastinating, and 3. Missing Class. In the worst outcome section I wrote, "Doing poorly on a given assignment thus making my scores inconsistent. In turn lowering my GPA." In the best outcome section I wrote "staying on top of material throughout the entire semester. Receiving only A's on assignment's and thus an A in the course". And lastly, in the action needed section I listed what I had to do to make this happen. I wrote 1. Review Material daily and not fall behind. 2. Start exam preparations at least a week early. and 3. Have frequent discussions with the professor. I especially liked the way this strategy helped me realize what I have to do.

The second strategy I experimented with was the exploring rewards strategy. In order to experiment with the exploring rewards strategy one has to first create a chart with a three sections and labels. The label's being no-cost rewards, low-cost rewards, and high-cost rewards. In the no-cost rewards section I wrote "peers thinking I am intelligent and increasing my confidence level." In the low-cost rewards section I wrote "taking a night off because of a very hard days work." And lastly, in the high-cost rewards section I wrote "being proud of my grades." Because I as well as my parents have high expectations of my grades, this is my most difficult and sought after motivation. I like the way this strategy helped me realize which rewards were my most important.

In conclusion, I enjoyed both of these strategies because they helped me realize things about myself. For example it helped me realize I am very self motivating. My parents care so much about my school work and I realize I care more about it than they do. Which I believe is rare amongst college students. I feel there are many students that just work hard because their parents want them to to to make them proud. This is not my only motivation. Because of my visual learning style this strategy made it all the easier to help me realize this.