First Psych Study and Management Project

                This has been a pretty eventful week. I participated in psychological study, had my first test in Managerial Communications and also submitted my semester-long project idea. I guess I’ll go in order in explaining them.

Two tasks were on the computer. I
seriously wanted to do just this.

                In Psych 101, one of the requirements of the course is to participate in a psychological study on campus or to write a short report on one of the studies. I decided to get it done as soon as possible so I wouldn’t forget and I was actually the first one in my class to participate in a study. I don’t know how many details would be all right to reveal, so I’ll be general. They were testing my stress level with a series of near-impossible tasks. Each time, there was an “easy” round which needed to be completed and a “hard” round that I could quit at any time. Then I filled out a sheet explaining why I quit when I did. It was pretty cool. I will admit that I was pretty stressed out, but I guess that means they designed the experiment rather well.

Here's a fun image for you. When I searched
"stress study" on Google Images, this is the
 first thing that came up.

               There really isn’t a whole lot to say about my test in Managerial Communications. It was a test – nothing out of the ordinary. I think I did fairly well. Anyway, I’ll just jump into my project proposal. For our project, we had to come up with some area of focus within managerial communications to do academic research, conduct an interview, write a report, and deliver a PowerPoint presentation. I decided that I would like to focus in on the motivational differences between volunteer workers and paid workers. To go along with my research, I am going to interview my mom who is a director of a program for the state of Massachusetts and supervises several employees – paid and volunteer. I think this will be an interesting topic of focus because it will analyze what kinds of motivators people best respond to other than money. Some people get enough from hearing their boss say that they did a good job while others want to be formally recognized within their group. Some people don’t need anything more than knowing their job is making a difference. This will be particularly interesting because I plan to tie in what I’m learning in psychology with this project.

How do you motivate someone?

                On a side note, it’s definitely application time for high school seniors. My shift to show my room to tours is from 11-12 and I’ve already had two large tours today. It’s currently 11:08. I remember what it was like to go from school to school and try to remember the differences between each. It’s not easy, but I think Clark has a very unique atmosphere to it. It’s in an urban location, but when you’re on campus, you feel like part of a tight-knit community. That’s part of why I chose Clark University. Of course, the academics are fantastic as well.