Question: I’m so tired of wasting time,and money and having no motivation to do well in school, I dont even know what i want to do anymore, I wish i was capable of doing something, I’m not good at anything nor have I found something of my interest. All I know is i have to a degree but not which one. I want to find motivation and become something and have goals. I need someone to push my limits. I always regret it after and feel useless and left behind but in the moment I never do my work and get lazy.

Thank you for submitting this question. Our counselling team would be able confirm that you are not the only student experiencing uncertainties and frustration. Just yesterday some of our counsellors met to discuss a program that I think is designed to address the kind of experience you describe. So there is some nice synergy between your post and our very recent conversation.

Let me begin with responding to some of the things I hear in your post. You describe how your uncertainty about your abilities and your interests lead to you feel, day-to-day, little sense of purpose and motivation. It makes sense to me that it is pretty difficult to get yourself going day-to-day for a degree that doesn’t feel meaningful to you yet. The motivation you mention involves our biology, emotions, cognitive states, and our social world. Ideally we reach a state where we feel energized to behave in ways consistent with our values, ideas, and goals.

Your post seems to suggest some motivation is already in place and that there are also some important ingredients missing. When you say you want to be capable of doing something, when you feel regret over not doing the work, and then you action that with your post here, I hear some emotional and mental resolve to make a change. There is a social element when you say you need someone to push you and I think I hear this as well when you say want to become something and have goals. The sticking point seems to be having some sense of what that actually looks like.

So the good news is that you can engage in practices that ready your mind and body for action toward your goals and, importantly, there are ways to gain more clarity about those goals. Here are two suggestions to begin the process.

First, I would recommend you attend the Career Passion Workshop to get a better understanding of how to develop a vision for your future that will guide educational and career choices. There will be many ideas from this three hour workshop to help you begin to understand yourself better and learn about the additional steps you might take to understand the interests, values, and inclinations you want to consider when doing career and life planning. Just go to our webpage and our new workshop schedule for the Winter semester will be up soon. There may be other workshops there that appeal to you.

Second, I would encourage you to take part in our new initiative: Student Success Teams. You mention wanting to be accountable to someone so that you feel that push to take action, that you need achievable goals, and it sounds like you are ready to develop strategies for improving motivation.  Student Success Teams will offer all of these elements. We are inviting student to sign up for a success team by calling our front desk (403-440-6362). A team will be created when we have six students whose schedules align so they can hold weekly group meeting with a counsellor. These weekly meetings will focus on helping group members to identify goals, learn whatever they need in order to accomplish them, and to support and encourage each other. I hope you’ll call and join one of these teams.

Hope that helps get you started. If you find you can’t act on these suggestions, do feel free to make an appointment with one of our counsellors who can explore the barriers with you.

All the best for now,

Mirjam

Question: Many of my friends are graduating next term. I’m shy and find it very difficult to initiate conversations with new people. Any suggestions on how I can make friends?

 Hello,

It can be tough to make new friends when you are shy, and especially challenging to get to know people in the random kind of social situations that occur on campus. For this reason, I recommend getting involved with people who are already organized in some way around interests that you might also share. MRU campus is a great place for this because there are many groups organized around such things as shared academic interests (like a psychology student group), shared activities (like the ski or chess club), and shared topics that people feel strongly about (like the Student Distress Centre Club, whose members are focused on promoting mental health and reducing the stigma of mental illness). There are also many volunteer opportunities on campus, such as the Mount Royal Students’ Association Peer Support Centre, which often trains a new group of volunteers in January (and which may have openings still for 2017). They are on the second floor in the Wyckham Centre.

I’m thinking that, as a shy person, it might be difficult to think about taking the steps to connect with these groups. One way to ease into this is to begin with an email or to sign up and get on an email list. The Student Distress Centre Club, for example, sends out regular newsletters and you might connect with even one person initially before jumping to meetings. They are looking for more “behind the scenes” volunteers right now, to help prepare the Stress Less Week mental health care packages. Then, if you feel comfortable with these students, you could join the group that walks around and hands out food and the mental health care packages to students across campus during exam week. If you want to have some fun feel-good experiences, this could be it. A smaller step for the Peer Support Centre might be just to walk by initially, then you could ask to meet with the coordinator if you feel more comfortable one-on-one, and then you might drop in some morning for one of their free breakfasts to perhaps meet one or two people.

Sometimes it seems like we need to be more confident before we can do these things. However, small doable steps allow for successes and these then lead to increased confidence.

Here are some more online resource you might want to check out for additional ideas about how to connect with other students:

http://www.mtroyal.ca/EmploymentCareers/CareerServices/Students/oncampusopps.htm#volunteer

http://www.mtroyal.ca/EmploymentCareers/CareerServices/FairsEvents/getconnected.htm

http://www.mtroyal.ca/CampusServices/WellnessServices/HealthyCampus/Volunteer/index.htm

http://www.samru.ca/studentopportunities/studentclubs/

Finally, if your shyness prevents you from taking these steps, you can make an appointment with a counsellor to discuss additional ways to celebrate your shyness while not letting it stop you from making new friends. If you want to wait until next semester, you can make an appointment in January by calling 403-440-6362 or attending at our desk at U216A starting January 3, 2017.