midterm

Task #1

Dear Friend,

Last semester I wrote to you about how much I learned in 1101, now I'm writing how much I learned thus far in English 1102. I learned a great deal about inquiries this term as we explored our themed question what does it mean to be healthy? I learned how to create and impose an inquiry into a research-able hypothesis in which the research method has been applied to for analyses research. I also learned what to look for when work shopping another's paper in class. I know I'm an inexperienced writer, so I always lacked sufficient ability to critically think how to address improvement. After reading a paper I became aware of a list of do and don'ts that help me in this task; such as comment as a reader versus anything else, as that is what you are when reading. A few other include to not rewrite parts of the paper, only make suggestions, and not being short and sweet, which I always been, but to be give more detail on what to fix. I recently learned how to make and identify claims. Although I am still exploring the topic, I feel like as I read I can now better identify them. Before I only an idea what took for when it came to claims, now I have a better idea as I continue to learn the types of claims and their purposes.

We also done a great amount of reflective writing, especially in our process towards creating an inquiry. This helped me understand the meaning of reflective writing as a look into the past to understand what you know, what you need to learn, and where you currently stand. Each blog post I did allowed me to review those aspects, and it actually assisted me learning the information I needed to make the autobiography as successful as it was. Due to its successes, I'm sure I'll note myself as I go through future processes of long work. This will be useful to me as I will remember what I thought a week(s) ago, as I tend to be very forgetful. As I am sure this more, this is all I can recall at the moment.

-Thaddeus Detlef

Task #2 (What is it like to be you? essay.)

This essay was written with the purpose of expressing myself to my readers. It was designed to give a little bit of back round, as long with some interests of mine so maybe a conversation would pop up later. The themes and ideas I included came from life experiences and favorite interests. I included a little bit about childhood and how I struggled with speech delay, as I believe this was important in my development as a person. I thought this may have seemed a little on the sad  side, so in the later half I included some interests of mine in attempt to brighten things up. Some of these interests included my love for computers, manga and anime, and drawing pastimes. My audience being my peers, I tried to apply a sense of relating aspects. I know my past might not be relate-able to most people, but by including my interests in purpose to make that happen, or try to. In that sense they they affected the material I used to make the essay, as long as possibly my tone, although my tone is fairly consistent through my papers so I likely failed there (or maybe that was me being me, which was what the paper was about).

During this paper I used reflecting and weird grammatical structures. Reflecting on my interests was no problem, but as I reflected on my childhood the years all smashed together making it difficult to say what happened exactly when. The weird grammerical structures I used was due to me trying our a new writing approaches. I disliked containing my writing, I like just letting it go, so the style is a result of such. This piece was not a difficult to bring together. There were certain pieces about my stories I thought were important, but also inappropriate to write, thus writing around them was slightly difficult. The result of everything was reflection going into greater debt then it ever has before. I learned that even as an introverted person, I was perhaps extroverted in some areas as well. I also encountered aspects that I shouldn't include, so learning the limits of reflecting experiences to peers was interesting.

The main goal of this piece was to tell my readers "this is who I am". I summed up one of my largest struggles, personality aspects of mine, and interests to display that point. Earlier I did mention I was a reflective writer, so as such a reflection over this piece and a revision is likely to follow. I did feel there were a few rough spots with transitioning from one topic to the next, so a smoother wording in these areas will likely make up the largest part of the revising process.

Task #3

Going into it I though "what is Ms. Ingram thinking making us read this book?" Now I see what she saw. The book was very important in developing the sense of what health is. Reading David's, story about how he so strongly supports his way of health, is something I have not seen before. Its takes on a very interesting view point. The readings and ideas from the book also gave inspiration towards my inquiry as I dwelling on mental health. If I did not read this book, it is likely my inquiry would have been something else.

#4

Reflective writing
is fun since our thoughts can be
seen again more times.

Fourth post

Blogging has allowed me to identify exactly what I know and don't know. As I type these words and responses I learn what knowledge I have by knowing how much I can say about the topic. If I want to say something about the therapist's point of view on motivation's relation to well-being; as I would begin typing about it I would come to a blank or a few words. The reason would be the lack of knowledge about it. I cannot type about a topic if I do not know about it. This shows exactly what I know and what I need to focus on learning. So in order to gain the knowledge that I am missing (to be more specific, lets use the annotated bibliographies), the research method allowed me to gain that missing knowledge.

 As far as the research process itself is concerned, the process of citing, checking words I am not familiar with, noting major concepts in the writings, drawing conclusions, it all seems natural. The most natural event about though is selecting a topic that you like, as I cannot imagine writing a paper with a topic that I find absolutely boring. If I find it boring, who will find it interesting? Likely no one, so its a waste of time. Interesting topics cause an increase of time invested by the author toward the paper. This possibly makes the paper more interesting, and increases the chances of the readers reading through the paper fully. I'm a person who likes science, so I naturally ask questions as I read through articles of interest to me. Personally, I do not find health itself interesting enough, so I decided to take a different approach and talk about health from a scientific psychological approach. This alone will cause a far more interesting paper for me to write and for my readers to read.

If the writing process has taught me anything, its that revising is something that doesn't stop until you say so. I could revise a paper to death, adding detail, precise examples, smoother wording, so on. Its hard to say where to stop. When the paper is good enough? When is it good enough then? When I have no more to add? Is that even possible? My inquiry question originally was "at what level of mental well-being does motivation begin to dwindle and can it be restored?" and then I changed it to "restoring low motivation levels to gain a better well-being." I could revise it again, but I will likely keep it like this. As for the question and topic themselves, I have become more informed in the process of how motivation works in psychological, behavioral, and biological methods. All three methods are connected, so separating the links can be difficult. Such as biological and environmental factors influence psychological thought, which is represented by behaviors that interact with the environment that may influence psychological, and of course psychological thought is a chemical process on the biological level. The three are intertwined, but as I have separated them, I figured biologists may say motivation may exist for survival instinct, psychological through effects how strong the motivation is, and behavior effects the actions of the motivation directly.

Overall I learned a lot, not just how motivation works on the three methods, but how the research process has effected my information gathering, and how the writing process will determine the effectiveness in presenting my information. I am already familiar with everything here, the topic and processes. Motivation has always been an interest in me, so now researching its inner workings is something really interesting to me as I hope to make use of the knowledge I will gain from it.

TD's third post

Since I am writing about reviving motivation levels in order to gain a higher well-being, my audience may include those who lack motivation, which is a tricky audience since they wouldn't have the motivation to read  a several page paper. My audience may also include those who wish to strength their already existing motivation, and learn how to become a little bit more committed.

The information I am using in this thus far has been 2011 material. The print source I am using is as recent as 2012 material, so it can be said my sources thus far are extremely timely. That may vary as I bring more sources to the table, but I intend on keeping it fairly recent unless the information is proven stable over lengths of time. I am also very concerned about timeliness when it comes to science, thus this concern will not escape my sight as I continue working on this paper. I intend on creating a timely paper by using information that is stable, recent, and trust-worthy.

Back in English 2011, as we wrote our ethnographic, I took my research into a psychological approach as I conducted research. I intend on doing to same with this upcoming paper. I do so because I have a huge interest in psychology, mostly cognitive thought and behavior patterns. This enables to take a semi-interesting topic of mine, such as motivation in well-being, and make is completely interesting, thus making my investment much more worth it. I have never been able to do this in high school (except in psychology class), so when it came to that paper I suffered as I wrote what my teacher wanted, not what I wanted. In high school we try to please our teachers before ourselves with our papers, following their rules, content, a certain topic that they want, grammar... the whole works. Such boring writing would cause investing personal time to become a greater challenge then what it was to be. I would like to believe that college teachers care more about the critical thinking, research, analyst, and information. I believe these teachers expect us (students) to bring something to the table without directly being asked, inspiring for something new. Plus I think reading 20 different papers by students who actually cared about their topics to be much more enjoyable then 20 careless papers all on how Beowulf acts as a archetype for modern heros.

Unfortunately I have not completed enough research on the same theme within my topic to notice multiple viewpoints. Other then the cognitive, biological, and behavioral view points I am not completely aware of viewpoints just yet.

One new thing I learned about my topic is that motivation is most strongly triggered when a desire for higher health is in place. Desires for material objects and personal goals do not seem to rank as high. This is also something we unconciously do, pershaps because it is within our natual selves that motivation's strongest key is for survival, and of course that means health.

Second Post

     The most interesting source I may have so far is an online journal article by Gelona Joe titled "Does thinking about motivation boost motivation levels?" I found it interesting since it discusses research based on one of my main concerns; does consciously motivating yourself actual increase your motivational levels, and if so by how much. The study does make a claim that usually thinking about your motivation levels boost your motivation, which I thought was going to be the case (now I have suppose for that hypothesis). I did not expect that the state of thinking would be 20% higher than for those did not think of their motivation levels however; I thought it would be lower (I had no real base for that thought though). I planning on using this information to perhaps aid in a solution for low motivation levels that doesn't take physical action, just mental action. As I said in my last blog, the thought of carrying out motivation on a physical can be challenging enough for those with severe lack of motivation, thus an aid based on simply implying changing cognitive thought may provide an easier way to tackle the challenge.

     The only change to my current inquiry "at what level of mental well-being does motivation begin to dwindle and can it be restored?" may just be rephrasing it to be shorter and more precise in the focus. I plan on continue research on the relationship between motivation and well-being, but I have to be careful to not sway too much from health as I ponder into psychological research. As I find more material my topic can potentially be narrowed to "restoring low motivation levels to gain a better well-being", in which will focus on motivation revival and leave out the "at what level of mental-well being" from my initial inquiry.
   
     I am not currently facing any major challenges in my research. A few challenges that appeared thus far may be material being too similar causing problems will obtaining various perspectives. I still have yet to find the three perspectives of my inquiry that I am looking for, psychological, behavior (I have some research), and biological (I don't have any research). One potentially useful method I do is that everytime I find a source that may be useful to my topic, I will make note of it to find it again even if I think I will not use the source. I do this because there are times my research may be lacking in some field of (examples, evidence, perhaps another paragraph needs to be added) and having these extra sources can be a big help in such cases.

Blog Post One

My question of inquiry still needs some refining, but as of current its something like "at what level of mental well-being does motivation begin to dwindle and can it be restored?" I settled on this question of thinking about what health problems do I encounter often and would like to know more about to solved those problems. Since I have motivational issues, I thought a question in this area would give me the most motivation toward researching and writing about something concerning health.


This topic is important on for understanding how motivation works. Someone who lacks motivation can feel tried, energetically, and extremely bored toward doing something they would otherwise extremely enjoy. The topic deals with at what level should you consider yourself to be actually constraining yourself against the difficult to obtain interests you may have, versus saying "I'll do it later." (If its an assignment, then closer the due date the more likely we would actually start the assignment. But if its something you really want to do in your life, then the due date can be decades from now and if you realize it that late then it may be too late). 


As far as I explained thus far it seems I would be looking for cheap tricks to gain motivation to go finally do the things you want to do. Its more than that though. The people who don't have the motivation to do these things have difficulty even following the tips to gain a better level of motivation, so those cheap tricks barely scratches the surface. The research I've done thus far is mostly primary experience and observations. The way I see it, lack in motivation causes "I wish I could (or would) have..." and then there's negative feelings, sadness, pessimism, depression. It could be that depression causes lack of motivation (which is true) but in some cases it could be the reverse or there's a third hidden factor involved. Things like this and more is what I expect (hope) to find.


Concerning my question of inquiry, there are several preferred approaches to determining the cause and solution the the given problem. The question can be seen as a psychological, behavior, or biological problem depending on the perspective, cause, severity, and symptoms the person has. These viewpoints are all great though, as they all allow insight on from angles of diverse expertise. That said, some sort of conclusion(s) has to be made that out do the others (but do they always out do the others?). So far I believe well-being being effected is mostly a behavior issue in the sense that once you start and get going it usually stays going, but then to keep going is the real issue. Finding that core interest will keep you at it (as far as I know) so I stand on behavior as the main cause (but if the person suffers from depression, is the issue still behavior?).


I have no questions or concerns at the moment. I did leave note-like questions (for my own use mostly) throughout the paragraphs above however, but those questions will hopefully be addressed as I research the topic further.