Weekly Blog

Blog 6: Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness in Academia.

Before COVID19, my friends and I would meet at the library and we would each study or do HW for our classes. Although we had different classes we would still do this to keep each other motivated, but to also bounce ideas off of one another. I think this incapsulates all three psychological needs. We all had autonomy and could do the work by ourselves in our dorms, but chose not to alienate ourselves. We all came from different parts of the east coast, and acted differently. We all had a similar major or classes that pertained to that major.

Autonomy in academia: The way that I satisfy the need of autonomy is by acting by my interests, values, and desires. I consider myself autonomous, in my household growing up I had a parent that was Autonomy-supportive and one that was controlling. I think because of this I know what it is like to be intrinsically motivated, as well as amotivation. I hold myself to a standard of achievement when it comes to my studies and do not alienate myself from others when i do work. When I first started school I was a Biology major; this was because of what others desired for me, not what I desired for myself. When I made the change to Psychology I realized that this is what I desired, and that it interested me.

Competence in academia: The way that i satisfy my need for competence is by acknowledging that some people are from different cultures so their interests, values, and desires may be different than mine. Their way of thinking may differ than mine, and thats fine.

Relatedness in academia: My hometown friends all have different majors than I but what connected us was the fact that we all grew up together. Coming to ODU I have found a group of friends that have the same major as I and we have connected because of it. I find it a bit easier to talk about academics with these people because the understand what goes on in this major.

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