Here is my motivational screencast on plotting in Python.
Demotivating experience:
A demotivating episode that I have experienced while learning occurred when I was an undergraduate taking a course called Data Analysis for Physicists. Initially, I was quite interested in taking the course because it was lab based meaning that I was going to get experience conducting popular physics experiments. I was forewarned by fellow students who had already taken the course that it was really hard and the instructor was not helpful, but my initial interest outweighed any warnings. On the first day of lab, the instructor informed everyone that each experiment was to be done individually and that working in pairs or groups was prohibited. My first lab experiment was the “Charge-to-Mass Ratio of the Electron” experiment where one measures the charge and rest mass of an electron. The instructor showed me to a dark room in the back of the lab which contained the main apparatus to use and then quickly left before I could ask questions such as “Are there any instructions on how to use this equipment?” and “Any instruction on how to begin?”. After struggling for around an hour trying to figure out what exactly I was suppose to be doing, I left the room to seek some guidance from the instructor. The instructor seemed very annoyed that I was asking for help and told me that I was going to have to just figure it out on my own. In that moment, my motivation for learning plummeted. With an disinterested instructor unwilling to help or provide any guidance, I lost motivation to learn. Instead of learning about all the amazing physics that the experiments where suppose to be about, I focused on enduring and tolerating the course.
To fix the situation during the incident, the instructor could have showed more interest in teaching the course and more investment in teaching the students.