Experience and Motivations are Tied in Outdoor Tourism Marketing

Many of us love the outdoors and enjoy engaging with wildlife. Much of my life I have loved the outdoors and tried to live part of my life there. We find that as the outdoor recreational opportunities improve there will also be a need to understand what motivates people to love the outdoors and how to market to them.

According to a study in the Journal of Vacation Marketing people who have positive outdoor experiences also begin to choose outdoor activities as part of their vacation (Ansan & Emeksiz, 2018). They enjoy creating experiences through choosing vacations that have an outdoor component.

We should not forget that experience is partly associated with our sensations and how we feel. Therefore, when marketing to such individuals it is important to create vivid imagery with positive emotions in order to tap those memories in a positive way.

Such emotions create motivation to purchase tickets, make vacation plans and continue to engage in the outdoor world. Marketing to this group can be improved when help people connect to nature through outdoor adventures, positive experiences, and engaging vividry. Showing engaging happy people experiencing something new for the first time helps attract people who have a history of outdoor discovery and enjoyment.

Ansan, K. & Emeksiz, M. (2018). Outdoor recreation participants’ motivations, experiences and vacation activity preferences. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 24 (1).
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Unpaid Training in Higher Education

You apply for an adjunct job and you get selected to go through their "free" training. However, free isn't really free because it costs the instructor something in terms of time and energy. They move through the process and you spend 20 hours a week for a few weeks passing the training and moving into the pool.

What happens next?

No work and no training pay. You are simply put within the pool in case they have some need. They need more faculty in their pool but there never really was a pressing need in the first place.

You might say that the training costs them money. It does and there may be some small benefit of going through the training but in many cases that cost is minimal once the modules have been created. For the worker, they just did labor without pay.

What if they paid minimal wage during this training? In this case they would only put people in the pool once they have a need. The workers would receive at least some small pay, much less than they are actually worth, but there would less taking advantage of these workers.

More and more schools are relying on adjunct workers because there is no obligation beyond the initial 6 or 16 week contract and they need not pay any benefits. However, this isn't really fair to the faculty who are finding their pay dwindle and their job security shrink.

Sometimes Things Seem Insurmountable but You Can Get Through It!

Everyone had challenges to face. Sometimes these challenges seem insurmountable but if we a moment, find a strategy and get over them we are ready to go! Life is about challenges, meeting those challenges and besting them. The only time you ever really lose is when you give up.

The Challenges of Full-Time Employees Completing a Doctorate Degree

Full-time workers have to balance a lot of things that include family, work, extra-curricular activities and school work. These are difficult issued for people to work around but the type of people who obtain these degrees have a level of discipline that many other student's don't have. They actually like school and learning so they are different than the average population.

Traditional schools make it difficult for students to go on and get advanced degrees. They require residencies and immersion into their school culture. Beyond the cost, students will have a hard time investing all the commuting time and campus time beyond simply the time associated with studying.

Once these graduates hit the market many move onto different careers and work. Sometimes employers reward them for their learning but in most cases they don't. They simply don't have a need for that much education. Well...they do but they don't necessarily value it the same.

While such education is important to ensure we are a scientific society that continues to develop new and exciting ideas many companies need a quick dollar ratio to justify higher costs. Thus, the challenges doctoral students face come from many different angles including the overall returns on their personal investment but those who make it through are fundamentally of higher value to learning organizations.

The Right to Develop Among the Gifted

I have some interest in the development of people with high potentials and abilities. It seems that we as a society are often pushing for people to fit within our own social un-evaluated beliefs. If someone doesn't do what we do then there must be something wrong with them. Not encouraging highly gifted individuals the "right to develop" we limit our potential as a nation and as contributors to the world.

The essential role of government and society isn't just to make money and pay taxes. It is about providing freedoms and reflecting the truest nature of human life. Developing people with high, but often unexplored abilities, means we are developing people to the highest state they can be.

Such individuals often give back in terms of art, science, economic development, social cohesion and other forms needed to improve society. They are the ones that change society for the better and are the same ones that crafted the essential truths that made up many of our beliefs and laws.

One such feature of highly gifted individuals is overexcitabilities and their association with personal development. According to an article in the Journal of Education of the Gifted high emotions and high intelligence are often associated (Mofield & Parker, 2015). Emotions and intelligence are part of the process of positive disintegration.

The types of overexcitabilities are psycho-motor, sensual, emotional, intellectual, and imaginational. These make such people slightly different in terms of their need for stimulation, thinking, feeling and mental playing.

Gifted individuals that develop to higher levels are different from others. They have innate skills that force them to experience these over-excitability that force them to positively disintegrate their self-identity and the view of the world around them. With enough time and effort they can develop a truly autonomous personality. It is there, in that spot of higher development, that they are able to fully contribute to society.

Mofield, E. & Parker Peters, M. (2015). The relationship between perfectionism and overexcitabilities in gifted adolescents. Journal of Education for the Gifted, 38 (4).

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