A Dream Come True

I started to look back at some of the readings we had earlier on in the semester and I came across the reading “Kerr, On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B”. Kerr’s Reading talked a lot about how the system is designed to reward one thing, while the subjects within the system are actually striving for another.  I started thinking about our project and what we are actually being rewarded for.  The structure of the assignment is such that you are not rewarded based on how much money you make.  The project is designed so that the reward is the experience of networking, planning events, collaborating, and dealing with problems as they come up.  Essentially, the reward is based on how much we are able to take away and learn from the process.

However, I started to think about what reward I was actually seeking, and what reward I think our group was seeking.  Our group wanted to raise as much money as we possibly could and make a difference in these children’s lives.  The intrinsic reward would be knowing that we helped in the process of giving a child “room to dream” by raising additional funds for the organization.  In this case however, although we were striving to raise the most amount of money (which is not what our systematic reward is based on), we were also seeking the rewards of the system.  We all recognized how valuable this experience was and how much we have learned and grown through this experience.

            One important thing to realize about this project is the reward we were not in fact seeking was just a good grade.  In all other projects, and experiences at Providence College, although teachers may have wanted us to get something out of whatever experience we were involved with, our primary goal ultimately boiled down to getting a better grade than anyone else.  This is not the case here, and I think that is part of the reason why this was such a great experience.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 10:19 am and is filed under Jeff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.