Final Post

At first I was a little hesitant on taking this course. “Motivation” sounded really broad and I have never taken Dr. Berg. “Motivation” did not sound too appealing either. On top of that, people always say “never take a course with one word as the course name.” I decided to go against my gut feeling and those nay sayers, and I’m glad I did.

During this semester I have learned a great deal of information dealing with psychology and motivation especially. Some of the course topics were: evolution & motivation, addictions, needs & drives, stress & coping and final personality. These topics were interesting and Dr. Berg did a great job explaining it. When it comes to evolution and motivation we learned about what motivates people to act the way they do, incentives, and emotions. In the needs and drives section, we discussed homeostasis, certain psychological and physiological needs. Hunger and thirst are two of the main needs for humans to survive. Stress and coping was also intriguing because the fact is everyone has stress in their lives. People need to know how to handle stress such as: assess the situation, recognize these stressors, and stay calm, and it could be very beneficial. Last but not least, in the personality chapter we discussed introverts, extroverts, and the different genetic make-up. Genetics and the combination of nature and nurture play a role in our personality.

My favorite section hands down would be the addictions section. By no means am I a drug addict, but narcotics are fun to learn bout. It gives you knowledge to better yourself and to understand what drugs do to people and their bodies. I especially liked how we classified them and learned what part of the brain it affects. It really hits home for the fact that we all know friends or family members who have these problems.