User:U3155398

About me
My name is John, and I am a 3rd year student at the University of Canberra, studying a double degree in Politics and International Relations & Psychology.

I am a mature age student (I loathe saying that - however, it is true. Sigh). I found myself at 37, with an (unexpected and unplanned) new born baby, and for reasons that I thought were instinctual (though I now know that instinct is a somewhat dismissed theory of motivation), I found myself all of a sudden very motivated to obtain a formal education (and to buy a property for my little family).They were two very powerful, consuming ideas that I felt came out of nowhere - and upon acting on both of those ideas, my life has already been transformed quite dramatically. I left the public service (much to the dismay of my friends and colleagues), and enrolled in full time study. I don't know how, but I actually managed to maintain full time work hours through my first 2.5 years of study - albeit in a completely different sector, and by working nights and weekends. I actually worked more than I did in the public service, and by doing so, I was able to buy that little property that became so important to me when my son came along - I ticked that off my list at the end of year 2 of fulltime study. And I am immensely grateful for that!

Now, my focus lays on completing these degrees. I was adamant at the start of this journey that once that goal was complete, I would pursue post graduate studies in politics. The idea being that one day I could work for myself in some type of consulting role. I mean Canberra is a factory town - it churns out politics, and by obtaining an education in this area, maybe I could work in that proverbial factory space too - but for myself. That is very important to me after 15 odd years of working for others! Having said that, I have freaking loved Psychology. More than I had anticipated, and I would be lying if I said I hadn't looked at post graduate studies in Psychology. I have - more than once. I guess more will be revealed in terms of that dilemma.

I have enjoyed the challenges of the unit that led me here - Motivation and emotion. When I first looked at the unit outline, I felt an overwhelming dread as I realised I would have to use this Wikiversity platform - something I had absolutely no experience with. Now, well, I am actually pretty confident in navigating my way around and editing pages, and adding hyperlinks, and inserting photographs (of me). I have always known that getting out of ones comfort zone more often than not leads to some form of personal growth - I guess I just needed to be reminded of that phenomenon experientially. This particular assessment piece has taken me from dread to excitement - excitement that I completed the task, and learned so much more than I expected, along the way. I hope you enjoy my book chapter. I actually really enjoyed creating it.

Book chapter I am working on
Feedback and motivation - What is the effect of feedback on motivation?

Hobbies

 * Climbing the top 20 highest peaks in Canberra (11 of 20 thus far).
 * Playstation 5.
 * Backcountry hiking.
 * Playing guitar (loudly and terribly).
 * Creating epic Lego cities with/for my son.
 * Scouring Facebook marketplace for bargains.
 * Newcastle Knights fan.
 * Saturday night English Premier league games.
 * Snorkeling.
 * Exploring any place that I have not been to before.
 * Adding hyperlinks to Wikiversity pages (because I can. Now)

Social contributions

 * 1) Added a post to start a discussion on the UC Motivation and Emotion Canvas page.
 * 2) Commented on a discussion on the UC Motivation and Emotion Canvas page.
 * 3) 15:05, 4 October 2021: Removed capitalisation of each word in the titles listed in the reference section of "Motivation and emotion/Book/2021/Beneficence as a psychological need".
 * 4) 17:38, 4 October 2021: Posted my first tweet ever (using emot21 hash tag)
 * 5) 17:59, 4 October 2021: Corrected a minor spelling mistake, and reworded a sentence to improve grammar in "Motivation and emotion/Book/2021/Work and passion".
 * 6) 18:08, 4 October 2021: Removed capitalisation of each word in the titles listed in the reference section of "Motivation and emotion/Book/2021/Uncertainty tolerance".
 * 7) 19:18, 4 October 2021, Removed capitalisation in section heading, and added hyphen in theory name in body of text "Motivation and emotion/Book/2021/Positive illusions about the self".
 * 8) 19:19, 4 October 2021, Added hyphen to theory name in the heading in "Motivation and emotion/Book/2021/Positive illusions about the self"
 * 9) 19:27, 4 October 2021: Added a hyperlink to a Wikipedia page on self-verification theory in "Motivation and emotion/Book/2021/Positive illusions about the self"
 * 10) 9:29, 5 October 2021: Removed web address from external link, replaced with hyperlink. Added names of where videos were found (YouTube and TED) in correct format.
 * 11) 9:31, 5 October 2021:Removed web address from external link, replaced with hyperlink.
 * 12) 9:42, 5 October 2021: Changed the word 'figure' to italics in all images. Corrected the image numbers so that hey are sequential