Motivation: I Miss You

Do you also sometimes get the feeling that you have lost your motivation to study/work/…even move? Does your bed (floor?) feel so comfy that you never want to get up again? Have you ever felt so absorbed by some procrastinating activity that time literally flied?

Next question: Why does this happen during the most important exam period? …

Quite honestly, this would make for an interesting research question. Why do even hard-working people just lose the mana to work at the moment they need it the most? Logically, I would expect some kind of natural selection here: If you are weak, you don´t graduate. And yet, this rule doesn´t seem to apply (show me a single person who has never felt weak or lazy – and I will give you my piano, one of my legs…)

I don´t think it´s “just the summer”. Sure, it is more difficult to concentrate when you have 30°C in your room and nature suddenly feels so inviting, but this cannot be the only reason. Is it because we think that we have almost reached the end of the semester and hence just want to “sleep it through”? Or perhaps because the semester is too long and we need a rest already? …

To all fellow sufferers: Kopf hoch, tanzen! No, actually, heads up (so far, so good) – study!

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Happy Towel Day!

Dear Readers, I would like to wish you happy Towel Day filled with excitement, fun and activities you love. But no matter what you end up doing, remember: “Never go anywhere without your towel.”

A couple of hints where to go today here. 

 

On-line Courses: The 21st Century Approach?

As you might have noticed, on-line courses are becoming increasingly popular all around the globe. Many renowned universities are making tons of course materials available for the public (see MIT, for example) or are offering paid courses with a tutor, where you get a certificate upon completion (see Cambridge).

Undeniably, such opportunities are amazing. They are there, up for grabs, if only you have enough time (or money) – and motivation – to exploit them. Suddenly you can learn about Shakespeare, linear algebra, Medieval music or just about anything else at any time you please. At home in your comfy bed, in a park on a bench during a sunny day, on train when going to your grandma, you name it.

Additionally, the possibility of interacting with your fellow classmates who can literally be anywhere in the universe (well, provided they have Internet connection on Venus) is simply thrilling. This is what “multiculturalism” really means!

However, there may be drawbacks to this virtual learning environment. Perhaps “just” Skyping with your professor does not help as much as a face-to-face conversation, maybe some ideas get lost in the virtual classroom, mayhap people do not (or cannot?) focus as much. Who knows?

Well, dear Readers, you are lucky today. I have decided to follow an on-line Psychology course in the coming two months, so you may look forward to first-hand reports on how do these things really work (or do not work).

It´s going to be…wait for it! 

 

The Best Thing About Final Exams…

 … is NOT the fact that they collide with the Ice Hockey Championship. (Meh. For those who don´t like this sport – it is enough to know that all Czechs, i.e. even the author of this post, are nuts about it. After Nagano it has almost become our national symbol…)

No, seriously. Final exams are exhausting, (probably) difficult and frustrating. But they offer one benefit you just can´t deny: They make you feel smart. How?

Let´s be honest here. It is probably the only time in your life when you actually understand “what the … all the lectures were about”. You have memorized some formulae, theorems and other stuff you will never see again in your life. Suddenly all the geeky jokes make sense – and are even funny!

Fair point. This is still not the best thing about finals. The best thing of course is the feeling when you hand in the last paper/test. Freedom! It´s over! … I wish.

Anyway, back to streaming and the match CZ – Russia. And good luck to you, my fellow student-victims!

 

Stolen Conversations

Time and again, I get the feeling that our conversations are gradually being reduced only to sets of – supposedly – funny quotes, memes and (virtual) exclamations. Classmates no longer say “hey, dude, happy birthday”; they post it on his wall instead. Somebody talks nonsense? “B..ch, please,” is the chorus. Even marriage proposals are moving to the virtual sphere, as if FB statuses were all that mattered.

It seems to me that all these “fun” websites are stealing the conversations we should be having. I am not just talking about those countless hours people spend “for fun” on social networking sites; I also mean the countless hours they spend improving their profiles, checking up on (read: stalking) others or uploading tons of things no one really cares about. (Yeah, let´s face it.) 

Judging from the number of new pictures on 9gag every hour, there must be thousands of people every day, every minute working on new “fun stuff” to post. Photoshop, random drawings, recycled memes of yesterday. And communication with the “outside world”? Just online.

Or worse, these sites are not just stealing conversations; they are here for our Schadenfreude too. A friend shared an article about a student who committed suicide because he had figured out it was a logical step to do – not that she would feel sorry for him, but simply because it happened to fit with her favourite meme “Seems legit.”

And do not even get me started on all those grammatical errors in memes and quotes people so often (mis)use…

So sad. What sort of childhood do these procrastinating kids have? (“When I was your age, not only that Pluto was a planet, but we went outside when we wanted to play soccer.”)

“You don´t know? How can you possibly not know that Philip broke up with her? It was all over Twitter yesterday.” – Because I have life, that´s why.