The Moonlighting Student

My Twittered Life

April 16th, 2009 6:49 am —  39 views

catsThe weather is turning toward nice with cool sunny days ahead. Hopefully I’ll get to step outside every now and then. Otherwise I’ll be in my basement office, tucked away in a corner of the back dungeon, hunched over a keyboard as my fingers play a crescendo that will last 11 days. Lots of thinking, organizing, and writing to come in the next week and a half as I wrap of requirements of classes.

It’s not like I haven’t wanted to blog lately. Funny how many times I’ve opened a window and stared at a blank blog post.

But look at me lately, twittering away in 140 characters posts. Let’s look at some of these recent tweets:

…My brain is ready for summer break but knows it is just an illusion. It isn’t really a break as much as a short delusion.

At nearly 140 characters, this was one of my first attempts at tweet poetry. Notice the superb rhythm and cadence. I was thinking about how summer has a totally different feel when it is sandwiched between two equally long (actually longer) periods of time of intense academic focus. Whether a person is in school, summer is just a season. Our minds give it more significance when washed with thinking from past and future.

…hanging out in the student lounge, folding brochures to hand out in class and eating some triscuits.

I tweeted this when, well…it says when. The brochures were for a group project I worked on called, Bblis. The lounge was busy. I noticed some classmates come in during this time that paced around a bit looking for a place to sit. Every seat was taken. There was room on the couch if this young woman would have been willing to raise herself from a prone position.

…sitting in class near an open window on the 4th floor…a squirrel just walked by on the ledge. i think i was the only person who saw it.

Just 3 hours prior I had been sitting in my online communities class and there was that event with the squirrel. Funny that I turned to Twitter to share it.

…is thinking about making some cinnamon rolls for Easter breakfast.

And this one was how I spent Easter morning. I treated myself and W. to some oven-baked cinnamon rolls. I took some heat for this one during a meeting yesterday wherein one of my co-workers (yet unconvinced if Twitter has any value to the world) took issue with the meaninglessness of knowing what I was making for breakfast. Then don’t follow me on Twitter I said…

And with that, I’m off to work.

Image: I took this the other day during lunch. The cats were happy and sleepy pinned down by the sunbeams.

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Intrinisic motivation

April 7th, 2009 10:40 pm —  33 views

SI 529 W09Intrinsic motivation occurs when people engage in an activity without obvious external incentives1. In other words, you aren’t offered something to do whatever you’re doing.

Intrinsic motivation explains much of the engagement with online social networking systems. Consider Facebook, Yelp, Yammer, Twitter, Wikipedia, open source projects as a whole. Most everyone using these systems are not motivated by some promise of reward2. There are incentives that encourage quality contributions, but these aren’t guaranteed.

So why do it? Is it because we are social animals and are using the internet to be social? I mean, why tell someone you’re thirsty, that you can’t sleep, or share some random opinion or perspective?

Maybe because we hope to reach someone, anyone.

We are by nature intrinsically motivated. Something inside encourages us to get up everyday, feed ourselves, and go about tending to our needs and satisfying wants. According to Professor Steven Reiss, there are 16 intrinsic reasons why we pursue things3.

It’s another late night and I’m up stewing thoughts for a paper I’ll be writing throughout the week on motivating contributions. What motivates you to contribute online? Is it one of those 16 things?

Image: A friend and rich thinker from this class. The class is rooted in social psychology and isn’t technical enough to motivate me but long-term intrinsic goals are allowing me to substitute the pursuit of good grades for the real reason…learning.

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  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_motivation#Intrinsic_motivation [↩]
  2. Though some at Yelp get paid to be ambassadors I understand. [↩]
  3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_motivation#Intrinsic_motivation_and_the_16_basic_desires_theory [↩]

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“history repeats itself, it fails to die…”

April 3rd, 2009 6:43 am —  22 views

my giant headWe humans have a history of dying. It keeps happening despite all efforts to thwart it. So we remember by embedding what we can into artifacts of all kinds. We write stories, music, poetry, blog posts, create artwork, photo albums, cities, temples, etc. It’s a good thing there’s a way to make more humans or we might become history ourselves.

The semester is winding down. A few more papers to write, a presentation to give, then the semester will be over and I’ll run head-on into summer. Golf league, reading for fun, computer games, painting and projects, trips up north.

The 12 weeks of summer are shorter than a semester. Of the 132 weeks (2.5 years) since I started graduate school, I’ve been attending classes about 86 weeks, or 65% of the time. What is that doing to me I wonder. Will it change anything? I know my first round of education had significant impact. Not sure yet if this round will be similar.

Here is Friday, following a night of thunderstorms. The earth is soaked and plants are waking up.

Spring is another of those things that repeats. The cycles continue.

Image: A random picture taken of myself walking across campus looking kind of serious.

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