I've Lost All my Motivation. Help!

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cbrant554
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I've Lost All my Motivation. Help!

Post by cbrant554 »

So the past couple of months I've seen myself go from going to all practices to making up excuses to not go to most, and I don't know what to do to get back on track. Personally, I don't like my coaches or the events I'm being put in and it's really put me in a slump. I want to quit but I keep telling myself to just stay till the end of the year, then I don't have to join next year. What should I do to motivate myself to want to do better?
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Re: I've Lost All my Motivation. Help!

Post by Giantpants »

Everyone is different obviously, but I’ve found my motivation always slumps (especially for quiz bowl, not really ever for SO) before the season starts. Usually when the first competition happens, I remember how much I love the grind and the people in the quiz bowl community! I’ve never really lost motivation for SO, but perhaps it works similarly?

Idk if you’ve had your first competition of the year yet but that’s always what sparks motivation for me.
Also, since I have a constant fascination with results, looking at my/my team’s old results always inspires me.
(E.g. probably the one I looked at most was our states 2019 results and I think missing top 10 by 11 points really has motivated our whole team to improve from last year)

You may not be able to change who your coaches are, but perhaps you can change your events? Additionally, I found that my motivation spiked back in 2016 when I became super close friends with all my teammates for the first time. But if you’re already good friends with them, that may not help.

Hope this helps!!
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Re: I've Lost All my Motivation. Help!

Post by BennyTheJett »

Personally, I think it's super hard to be in events you hate (I'm in the same boat as you, hating astronomy and fossils). That being said, I think when I force myself to work on the events and get good at them, I usually medal. Once I medal in an event I find it significantly easier to work at.

PS: If you want help with any of DP, Astro, Fossils, GeoMaps, or WQ, I'd be happy to help!

EDIT: @GiantPants I just realized how much our events overlap xD
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Re: I've Lost All my Motivation. Help!

Post by eagerlearner102 »

Thank you for bringing this up. I think part of the reason I lost motivation is that I am focused on other competitions. I struggled a few months earlier because I was too worried about the medals. Now, I accepted that I may not win and that is ok, because learning the science is already the award! It may be an issue if you are focused on the extrinsic parts of science olympiad.
I think what motivates me to kind of work on the build event that I lost interest in is that my school bought the launcher for me so I feel bad to waste money on it.
I think you will be more motivated if you have partners that care for you. Part of the reason I lost some motivation is that I accepted the fact that my partners aren't as interested in science olympiad so I am pretty much doing it all by myself.
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Re: I've Lost All my Motivation. Help!

Post by jimmy-bond »

I'm quite the opposite of eagerlearner in the regard that I found motivation mainly because I knew that my partners were not motivated, so I took it upon myself to be independent in my events. I highly doubt this works anywhere other than Hawaii, but the top two, maybe three, schools here for both divisions have people soloing events for all invitationals and regionals, so each individual is motivated to prove that they are worthy by medaling without help from others.

Now I have no idea how your SciOly team is organized, but I ignore my coach for the most part. As for events, you can do what my teammates do when they want new events: study for a short amount of time, beat out the people already in the event, and replace them. If you can assert yourself as the top person in an event you enjoy, I don't think your coach can turn you down.
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Re: I've Lost All my Motivation. Help!

Post by MadCow2357 »

jimmy-bond wrote: February 2nd, 2020, 9:28 am I'm quite the opposite of eagerlearner in the regard that I found motivation mainly because I knew that my partners were not motivated, so I took it upon myself to be independent in my events. I highly doubt this works anywhere other than Hawaii, but the top two, maybe three, schools here for both divisions have people soloing events for all invitationals and regionals, so each individual is motivated to prove that they are worthy by medaling without help from others.

Now I have no idea how your SciOly team is organized, but I ignore my coach for the most part. As for events, you can do what my teammates do when they want new events: study for a short amount of time, beat out the people already in the event, and replace them. If you can assert yourself as the top person in an event you enjoy, I don't think your coach can turn you down.
This held true for some teammates and I last year - I think this is the case for many smaller teams. However, my Coach was very involved in everything SciO related, so we probably had better support in this aspect.
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Re: I've Lost All my Motivation. Help!

Post by Bread »

Keep going bud you can do it.

Some thoughts speaking from my POV:
GiantPants wrote:Everyone is different obviously, but I’ve found my motivation always slumps (especially for quiz bowl, not really ever for SO) before the season starts. Usually when the first competition happens, I remember how much I love the grind and the people in the quiz bowl community! I’ve never really lost motivation for SO, but perhaps it works similarly?
This usually does work, but in this case I doubt it did. The coaches didn't allow resources to the one invite that they did go to. This made it very discouraging for me and is part of the reason I quit. I feel had I been there it would have felt kinda hopeless in the sense that you could do better, but because of unnecessary barriers, they prevent you from doing your best and you end up without a medal and wondering what could have been.
BennyTheJett wrote:Personally, I think it's super hard to be in events you hate (I'm in the same boat as you, hating astronomy and fossils). That being said, I think when I force myself to work on the events and get good at them, I usually medal. Once I medal in an event I find it significantly easier to work at.
This is interesting. Can't really confirm or deny this.
jimmy-bond wrote:I'm quite the opposite of eagerlearner in the regard that I found motivation mainly because I knew that my partners were not motivated, so I took it upon myself to be independent in my events. I highly doubt this works anywhere other than Hawaii, but the top two, maybe three, schools here for both divisions have people soloing events for all invitationals and regionals, so each individual is motivated to prove that they are worthy by medaling without help from others.

Now I have no idea how your SciOly team is organized, but I ignore my coach for the most part. As for events, you can do what my teammates do when they want new events: study for a short amount of time, beat out the people already in the event, and replace them. If you can assert yourself as the top person in an event you enjoy, I don't think your coach can turn you down.
For the first part I think that pertains to the why you're doing Science Olympiad. It certainly helped me last year for fossils as I had sort of a dud partner up until after state and then I had to teach a new one for nationals which ended up working out because I really studied to make up for lack of competent partner and ended up with a national medal that I was happy with. But, if your motivation for Science Olympiad comes primarily because you don't want to hold your team down or because you want to see your friends everyday this probably won't work. As for the second paragraph that is certainly something I recommended to him (or should have if I didn't). The only thing is it's really hard to "beat out" someone because they only have one team and don't really give out tests for everyone so I'm not sure exactly how he'd do that. Also, I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling they take seniority over merit, but it's been a while so I don't know.

Overall, these coaches are really demotivating. It's about 80% of the reason I left. I feel bad too, because the actual students there are nice people and usually pretty enjoyable. If the coaches just left I'd probably be making a rocks binder for next year or something because then I'd feel way more compelled to work and maybe I could have the prospect of medal in the future, but for now that idea will have to wait.
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Re: I've Lost All my Motivation. Help!

Post by PirateShip »

cbrant554 wrote: January 16th, 2020, 11:52 pm So the past couple of months I've seen myself go from going to all practices to making up excuses to not go to most, and I don't know what to do to get back on track. Personally, I don't like my coaches or the events I'm being put in and it's really put me in a slump. I want to quit but I keep telling myself to just stay till the end of the year, then I don't have to join next year. What should I do to motivate myself to want to do better?
Just some random 2 cents. As you had the opportunity to go to Nationals as a middle schooler, which many do not get to do, perhaps stick it out, and add some leadership to the team to make it as great as your middle school.
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