Becoming Motivated to Study

                                                     BECOMING MOTIVATED TO STUDY


          A recent study by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi indicates that to become motivated to learn in school, (a) you must learn to genuinely enjoy reading and studying and using the information (usually telling others about it), (b) you must be given support and challenge at home and school so that you willingly take on tough assignments, realizing that you will occasionally not do well or not get done, (c) you must feel competent and be taught or tell yourself that doing poorly on an assignment or a test basically means that you need to work harder or take a different approach or both, and (d) you must, in most cases, believe the information learned is worthwhile (at least for passing the exam).

          So, if you were an undisciplined person, like John, how could you become motivated to study and gain self-confidence?

          1. Learn "I am responsible"--that the more you study, the more you learn and the better your grades are. Thus, you begin to feel more responsible for what you get out of school. How exactly can you do this? (a) Keep records of how much you study and compare your grades when you have studied a lot with times when you study very little. (b) Prove to yourself that you are in control of your grades, no one else, not the teacher, not the exam, not luck.

          2. Learn "I can be in control"--that you are capable of directing your life. How? (a) Schedule more study time and reward your promptness and increased effort. (b) Carefully measure the greater efficiency you achieve, e.g. how much more of the last few paragraphs do you remember when studying intensely ? (c) Remember: doing poorly simply means you should try harder. Take pride in your self control.

          3. Learn "I have ability"--that you have more ability than you previously thought. How? (a) Have more success by developing skills, like reading and test taking skills. (b) Get more information about your ability, such as aptitude test results or a respected person's honest opinion. (c) Increase your feelings of competence.

          4. Learn "I value learning"--that you can value studying and success in school more. How? (a) Write down all the benefits of doing well in school. (b) Remind yourself that each successful step in school means three things--you are earning a chance to continue, you have what it takes to succeed, and you have done something worthwhile. (c) Make use of what you learn, e.g. tell others, interact with others who can add to your knowledge, apply the knowledge in other classes or at work, etc.

          5. Learn "I may deceive myself"--that you, like others, are capable of remarkable self-deceiving and self-defeating thought processes which interfere with many important activities in your life, ranging from doing your best in school to trying out for the track team or asking the smartest person in school for a date. How? (a) Observe your attributions, especially your excuses, and double check their accuracy. (b) Overcome your fears by doing whatever scares you (if it is safe)! (c) Attend closely to your self-concept, including self-efficacy and attitudes about changing, and find the best views for you.

          You need to realize that change is possible before you can change. In recent years, a procedure called attribution retraining has been successful in increasing peoples' motivation to do better in school and other settings. In most cases, the experimenter persuaded the subjects that their failure at a task (e.g. grades) was due to a lack of adequate effort. Not surprisingly, later the subjects tried harder and did better. In other studies, seniors told freshmen about their grades improving markedly or a professor described almost flunking out as a freshman, but, with help of a friend, he started to take his studies seriously, eventually excelling in graduate school. By implication or explicitly, these success stories tell us that we too can change and that good grades result from hard work and persistence day by day, not just before exams and during the last week of the semester. Furthermore, the more effort you put in, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more able you are to do well.

          Actually, some researchers have reported that the above success stories improved exam scores a week later and even GPA and Graduate Record Exam scores months later. Improvement was greater in students who believed they had little control over their lives However, if students can improve their grades after a couple of effort-improves-grades stories, then why don't the hundreds of you-can-change-your-life stories told by friends and parents or on TV or in the movies, have the same effect on all of us? One possibility is that our belief in our own self-control is very situation specific, i.e. the success story of an average-turned-super insurance salesperson would probably not inspire a high school freshman to study harder.

          Studies of female valedictorians and other academically gifted women often find that they "drop out" of college or graduate school. At the very least, almost every very bright woman finds it necessary to frequently deny or hide her intelligence. Men and women find highly able women threatening. You may think sexism is in the past, but being superior is especially hard for women. Walker & Mehr (1993) provide help for gifted women who want to achieve their potential.