I'm so bored and fed up with the paper I talked about in my last post that I'm procrastination to new levels...

I've been googling for topics such as "Motivation problems with academic work". Alot of the sites that are returned talk about motivation in infant and primary schools. Alot of emphasis is placed on parents and teachers encouraging work by prasing things that children do well or work hard on. Appreciation is one of the basic things, apparantly, that spurs us on to work hard and produce good output.

Perhaps that's the problem I have at Uni, the fact that there is no praise what so ever. It's one thing having friends tell you they like a bit of your coursework or something you've done as a hobby, but I can't remember a single point in my nearly two and a half years at Uni where a piece of my Uni work has been given praise by a lecturer or staff member.

I don't mean to sound egotistic or attention seeking, but when someone goes that little way to be nice, it produces a lovely warm happy feeling.

It's like when I was in ASDA yesterday, buying food for the week I was feeling faint and stressed. The lady behind the counter was absolutely lovely. She chatted lots and put a smile on my face. But the main thing was she took £1 off my shopping, for no reason but "good will". She said that out of everyone she serves, it's probably someone like me (as a student) that'd appreciate it most. And I did. It was wonderful.

I don't like it when people feel they have to do something nice, but it'd be good if it was done more often, as long as it's completely genuine.