The choices a person makes in life depend entirely on how they perceive the world and the people around them. When it comes to making a decision that could affect the rest of my life, I take much consideration into all the possible outcomes of my decision by observing those who have made each of the choices possible. When it came to choosing whether or not to attend a university, several psychological factors played an important role in helping me to reach a decision.

Towards the beginning of high school, the thought of studying, homework and class-work was rather unpleasant. I remember seeing 9th grade as such an unreasonable obligation. It wasn’t until my junior year that I suddenly realized that the work I did every day, even the smallest of assignments, actually mattered. Why did everything matter? College! If I could study, complete all assignments, and get good grades, the end result would be my acceptance into a good university. Looking towards psychology to classify this revelation, I found the answer in a theory dealing with Operant Conditioning. In my case, the Premack Principle could describe accurately my reasoning for attending a university. This principle s

There are many role-model-type people whose “success” never had anything to do with a college education. Take some musicians for example. Images like the rags-to-riches story of a lone guitarist who wrote a great song and made it big overnight. And what of the extremely wealthy rappers who own several Mercedes, but never got past the 10th grade? These stories (however shallow they may be) seem to hint towards those who idolize these people that a college education isn’t a necessary step towards good fortune (4 years, or simply overnight? The choice is simple for some people!). What most of these kids fail to acknowledge is that even though anything is possible, nothing is definite…and without a college education, the word nothing receives much emphasis. Getting a college education (4 years or more) can almost double your income as an adult. The average annual income of a high school drop out by the time he/she reaches adulthood is $10,000, for those who finish high school, about $18,000. A college education surpasses both, showing an average income around $35,000 (Phelps County Community Partnership, 2001, Received October 24, 2001 from the World Wide Web @ http://www.thepccp.org/). Simply, a college education is money in the bank! It would be nice to beat these facts into the heads of today’s hardheaded, daydreaming, high school students (not literally speaking of course). A college education provides a much more con

Some topics in this essay:
Intrinsic Motivation, Attend University, Premack Principle, Wide Web, Observational Learning, Angeles USC, college education, attend university, Received October, choosing attend university, Community Partnership, observational learning, choosing attend, concept observational, baron 2001, intrinsic motivation, concept observational learning,