For me, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation differs a lot. Since my early age, I distinguish clearly between schoolwork and extracurricular activities. During week days, I devote 100% of my energy into schoolwork and during weekends, I participate in robot and model aircraft clubs.
Before I entered college, I think that completing coursework is a student’s duty and it is also very rewarding. By behaving well in school, I can receive praise from my parents, respectation from peers, promising jobs and For this reason, completing schoolwork is mainly motivated by extrinsic rewards.

My dad used to have an argue with my mum about whether they should reward me by giving me some money to buy what I want if I perform well in exams. He thought exam scores should not be related with money rewards. While my mum thought it is reasonable since rewards can motivate me a lot. After I entered college, I thought my dad was right, although money rewards did motivate me to get higher scores, it is extrinsic motivation. According to the textbook, extrinsic rewards can reduce intrinsic motivation. When I look back, I cannot clearly figure out what is my intrinsic motivation of studying hard at school. Most of the time, I am motivated to study a subject just for the reason that I am good at it. If I am not good at a subject, such as Chinese, I just keep persuding me that if my Chinese is not learnt well, I will not be able to enter a good school. Usually, during this process, I suffer from heavy depression and anxiety. Speaking of how much passion I have in all of these subjects, I have to say, very little. My behaviour in exam-oriented education is like a machine. I get rewards, commitments as inputs and output good scores.

Although I behaves like the walking dead in schoolwork, I have intrinsic motivations in other fields, such as building robots and flying model aircraft. These activities fulfill no obvious purpose other than enjoyment.

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