Sunday, August 15, 2010

My Drive

I have been VERY busy this summer and I have always come to this blog and clicked on the "new post" button various times but never got around to typing. I started reading DRIVE while working at the Houston Zoo this summer and somehow found some of the ideas mentioned in the book similar to what I was doing on my own. I am going to be honest and say that this book wasn't my favorite but it did open my eyes to a lot of things. For example, whenever the author mentioned about offering a reward, like money, for an action to be done can be dangerous I could honestly say to myself I have witnessed that. My younger sister doesn't enjoy reading and so during the summer my family has accustomed her to read and she knows she will receive an amount of money in return. Obviously she finds a way to not really read the book and receive the reward. It reminded me about the part in the book where the idea of a not so well job done will be a consequence. On the other hand I realized that my love for animals and volunteer work is the other type of motivation mentioned in the book. I first applied to the Houston Zoo Crew program because I would love to spend my summer working with animals and gaining more knowledge about them. As I worked my hundred hours I realized that I was being rewarded in small ways, such as, discounts, the laughter of the campers and knowledge. The book then became a bit more interesting to me because I realized how much these kind of scenarios happen everyday and one goes through life not really paying much attention to it. My drive this summer was keeping myself busy helping others while in return gaining many rewards that weren't always necessarily money.

3 comments:

  1. Lucy --

    Thanks for slogging through the book. As it happens, you made my day with your comments -- because the whole point of being a writer is to help people see their world in new ways. Glad that happened at the zoo.

    Cheers,
    Dan Pink

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  2. I don't really know how to use this blog thing. But reading through most of my classmate's blogs I see that and we are all excited and very motivated to apply most of the things we read in Drive onto our everyday lives as seniors. I see how Becca states that maybe rewards aren't the best thing. Which sucks because who doesn't want a certain motivation like that.

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  3. I completely agree with you Lucy. To add a personal anecdote of my own I went to Chile this summer. To be honest I was extremely excited at first but as it boiled down to final hour before we left I started to feel as if maybe this wasn't the right thing to do. I basically had no motivation for going but I went anyways trying to summon up the motivation I needed to continue, and I did. One month later I was busy reaping the rewards of my motivation. I acquired new found friends, new found family, bonds that will last me a lifetime and I would do it all again.

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