Pop Culture Piece

On September 7, 2009, then-President Barack Obama delivered a convincing address at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. Barrack Obama encouraged students to take an active role in improving their academic achievement in his remarks. Despite acknowledging the importance of outstanding teachers, parents, and schools, the former president emphasized pupils' hard work as the surest path to success. Notably, when Barack Obama was younger, he had to get up every day at 4:30 a.m. to attend home-based studies with his mother (Obama White House, 2009). In his speech at Wakefield High School, Barrack Obama encouraged all students, regardless of their levels or socioeconomic status, to use education as a platform for realizing their strengths. He said, “You could be Supreme Court Justice or a Senator, but you will never know until you join the debate team or school government (The Obama White House, 2009). Education is critical not only to individuals’ success but also to the nation. Barrack Obama encouraged students to triumph over their socioeconomic challenges and work towards their bright futures. Overall, the former president noted that success does not come easy and that students must be willing and ready to put in extra work to succeed in their academics and future lives.

Based on President Barrack Obama’s inspiring speech, I opine that students must strive to be self-motivated. More specifically, they should replace pessimistic perspectives with optimistic thoughts. Regardless of their academic level or socioeconomic statuses, learners should avoid over-relying on parents, teachers, and schools to become self-efficient. Students should be visionaries, purposeful, have high self-esteem and a right attitude to success.

Summaries of Articles

Article #1

In their article “The Relationship Between Academic Self-Efficacy and Academic-Related Boredom: MAOA Gene as a Moderator,” Liu and Lu (2017) aimed to explore the relationship between students’ self-motivation drive and their academic-related boredom. Further, the researchers wanted to critically analyze the confluence between mono-amine-oxidase type A (MAOA) gene polymorphism, self-efficacy, and academic performance. The approach was informed by past studies such as Roseman (1975) who established that students with IQ levels lower than 95 experienced more boredom than peers with higher IQ rates (Liu & Lu, 2017). Additionally, numerous researchers including Nemeroff (2000) established that serotonin, a primary neurotransmitter in the central nervous system greatly influenced people’s moods, and emotions (Liu & Lu, 2017). For their study, Liu and Lu (2017) used a sample of 514 Chinese students. All subjects were in high school level, specifically between grades 10 and 12. The researchers measured the participants’ levels of self- academic- efficacy and their educational boredom levels. Additionally, the analysts recorded their DNA data and examined it via linear mixture model. The findings showed a close relationship between self-efficacy levels, academically related boredom, and the MAOA Gene. Liu and Lu (2017) that students with the 4-repeat allele were more self-efficient than those with the 3-repeat allele. The former group had higher academic performance than the latter cluster.

Notably, this research by Liu and Lu (2017) is related to my pop culture piece since they both examine factors that influence students’ academic performance. Both inspect the extent to which learners affect success in their academic achievement. However, the research refutes my pop culture statement that every person has the potential to succeed in personal studies. More specifically, the research shows that some students have a gene that affects performance regardless of their efforts. Students with the 3-repeat allele have low self-efficacy levels and experience great academic-related boredom.

Article #2

For this study, the researcher aimed to critically examine the confluence between academic self-efficacy, gender, and educational stress and determinants of psychological well-being of college goers. In other, words, the study focused on establishing how one’s gender influenced self-efficacy and the ability to cope with academic stress. The research emanated from the need to understand how self-efficacy and academic stress affected students’ psychological well-being. In the study, the researcher invited various students to partake in an online questionnaire. The data collection tool encompassed questions that assessed the three variables: gender, academic self-efficacy, and academic stress. The study used a sample of 146 students from a Midwestern university, USA. The researchers examined the results using a hierarchical regression analysis where they entered the gender, self-efficacy, and academic stress as the first, second, and third variables respectively. Notably, the researchers used academic stress as the third variable since they anticipated that it was the greatest causal factor mental disorders among students. The findings showed that gender was not a strong predictor of psychological well-being. However, academic stress and self-efficacy were both great determinants of students’ psychological health. Among the two, self-efficacy was the greatest contributor to mental disorders among students with a 12.6% influence. Academic stress contributed to 11.7% of the discrepancies in psychological health scores. Contrary to what the researchers had hypothesized, the study showed that academic stress was not a greater determinant of psychological well-being as self-efficacy. In other words, Although academic stress proved to affect psychological health, just as the researchers had hypothesized, self-efficacy showed that it had much greater tendencies of affecting students’ mental well being than it the scholars had expected. Despite gender being the first variable, the research showed that a person’s gender had only 0.7% influence on mental health. These findings differed from those of previous studies which opined that females and males had different coping strategies with regards to academic anxiety.

Admittedly, this article is related to my pop culture statement since it asserts the substantial influence of self-efficacy on a person’s life. According to the report, self-efficacy is central not only to students’ academic performance but also their mental health. Although President Obama did not overtly address psychological well-being among students, he acknowledged that students face a lot of pressure due to their academic work. He said, “it is understandable for those in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school to be nervous. I also know that it is not easy to perform well in school; most of you have challenges that make it challenging to focus on your school work” (djdjdjd). However, President Obama, similar to this article, emphasized the role of self-efficacy in establishing academic and social equilibrium. Further, the report supports the pop culture statement by showing that every individual, regardless of their gender, has the potential to make it in life, as long as they are self-motivated to work hard.

Conclusion

It is without a doubt that president’s Obama speech at Wakefield High School was one of the best motivational talks. It showed that self-efficacy and students’ determination to succeed were primary in attaining high academic performance. The president said that the nation could have the best teachers, school, and parents, but none would matter unless students were willing to fulfill their responsibilities. Learners had to be self-motivated to triumph over their socioeconomic challenges. Admittedly, these articles prove that every student, regardless of gender, had a potential to succeed if only he or she worked hard. Although students experienced academic stress that could hamper their efforts, those with high self-efficacy were bound to succeed since the latter’s impact on mental health was greater than the former’s. However, Liu and Lu’s (2017) refuted the pop culture statement by suggesting that it is genes, rather than personal determination, that determines a student’s academic performance. There is a need for more research to this claim.

References

Liu, Y., and Lu, Z. (2017). “The Relationship Between Academic Self-Efficacy and Academic- Related Boredom: MAOA Gene as a Moderator. Youth & Society, 49 (2): 254- 267.

The Obama White House (2009, September 8). President Obama’s Message For America’s Students. [Video File]. Retrieved from < http://www.easybib.com/guides/citation-guides/apa-format/youtube-video/>