Browsing by Subject "Diary"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Be careful what you wish for : characteristics of college students’ academic goals, their daily effort, and emotional well-being
(2017-05) Seo, Eunjin; Schallert, Diane L.; Patall, Erika A.; Awad, Germine H.; Pituch, Keenan A.; Henderson, Marlone D.
Failing to meet personal academic goals in college, such as completing a final paper or finishing weekly reading materials, often results in poor performance, failing grades, or even class withdrawal. A great deal of research has established the benefits of setting goals for performance. Research has also suggested that self-concordance, utility value, difficulty, and specificity of goals influence the benefits of setting goals. To date, however, many of these goal characteristics have been independently examined outside of educational contexts (e.g., in work settings) and never tested simultaneously altogether. In addition, little work has examined how these different goal characteristics predict college students’ effort and well-being on a daily basis. As a result, researchers have overlooked the problem that students tend to overestimate their effort when it is measured across different days. I conducted this research to remedy this gap by investigating how various goal characteristics, including self-concordance, utility value, difficulty, and specificity, predict students' time spent toward their goals and emotional well-being during goal pursuit on a daily basis. Using both variable- and person-oriented analyses, I found two key elements that positively predicted students’ daily time spent toward their goals and emotional well-being: self-concordance and utility value. Goal difficulty and specificity did not statistically significantly predict college students’ time spent and emotional well-being. Furthermore, I also revealed the reciprocal relations among time spent and emotional experience. College students spent more time working toward their goals on the day they felt stronger emotions regardless of its valence. On the day students spent more time, they experienced heightened positive and negative emotions. The greater positive emotions, in turn, led students to reduce their time spent toward their goals on the next day. The finding emerged even after controlling for characteristics of goal pursuers (e.g., sex, race, prior GPA, self-control, social support, and readiness) as well as prior day’s effort and emotions. Through daily examinations of students' goal characteristics, effort, and emotions, I hope that this dissertation contributes to broadening the applicability of goal-relevant motivational theories to students' daily academic experiences and to educators' knowledge regarding effective goal practices.
iTrak : a social mobile diary and web blogging utility for travelers
(2013-05) Dao, Tung Thanh, active 2013; Aziz, Adnan
iTrak is a combined mobile and web application that takes advantage of the GPS to allow travelers to share their experience while travelling. The application gathers GPS data and broadcasts it via a web interface or social networks such as Facebook to update user’s status during a trip. iTrak is also equipped with other features such as writing notes or recording video journals to offer a rich experience and provide an interactive diary, along with a real-time tracking ability, for travelers.
Who Am I Writing For? An Exploration Of The Influences Of The Private And Public Sphere
(2019-05-01) Davis, Mia; Kevorkian, Martin
In our present day, thousands of people keep a diary—personally, I can say I have kept a journal for most of my adolescent years. When looking back on my own writing, I am interested in the ways that my thoughts processes and descriptions have evolved or stayed the same with time. I began to wonder, what is the purpose and meaning behind a journal or diary? If one writes a journal for her own eyes only, then there’s likely some sort of individual self-exploration or private growth tied in with the process. Charlotte Perkins Gilman kept diaries for most of her life that she did not intend to publish when she first began to write them. However, many diaries were meant to become public from the start, and serve an entirely different purpose—for instance, May Sarton’s, Journal of a Solitude. I am particularly interested in these notions of the public and private sphere in relation to keeping a diary and how this affects the overall tone or purpose behind the authors’ writings. When one writes with the intent of publication, how does this shift in audience affect the way we understand the text’s rhetoric of disclosure? How does the language change when compared with a diary that focuses on private intent? Can these two spheres be truly separated or is there ultimately a fusion of both? These are the questions that I discuss in my thesis. In light of these studies of spheres of influence, I conclude with the reflections on my own journals and the motivations behind my entries.