Motivating Factors

“We are not supposed to be perfect.  We are supposed to be useful.” — Leonard Peltier

A few weeks ago, a senior in my philosophy class–let’s call him Andy– asked me, “How do you stay motivated?”

I don’t think he was interested in what kept me going, per se.  I think he wanted to know how anyone had motivation, and if there was perhaps some  magic elixir I could share with him.  I remember thinking at the the time that when we are young we are far more willing to look at the world thus: if I could just find that one answer I’m looking for, everything will fall into place.  If I could just get my car, if I could just get that girl to notice me, if I could just get my diploma, then it’s all going to be o.k.

Come to think of it, we keep doing that as adults, don’t we?   I think this is why his question has stuck with me so.  What keeps me motivated, and why does Andy struggle with it?  What keeps our current class valedictorian so motivated that she’ll do extra credit for me if her grade slips down to a 98?  Conversely, what keeps one of my colleagues–let’s call her Andrea–from being  motivated?   Andrea uses all of her sick days  up by February vacation and seems perpetually  resentful of the presence of her students.

I wonder if Andrea thinks if she can just make it to Friday, or the end of the school year, or to retirement, then everything will be o.k..  The problem is that most of her day is filled with events and interactions that make those goals seem so far away.  Maybe that’s why she’s so unmotivated.  She has a goal, but it doesn’t get her what she needs, and she has to wait so long to get it.

This strikes me as ironic, because every motivational speaker–whether they be self-help gurus, retired professional athletes, or pseudoscientific charlatans (or all of the above!)–will tell you that the key to motivation is to set realistic goals and work towards them.  I won’t dispute this, but it seems to me those goals also  have to be meaningful–that the process of obtaining them must be just as valuable, if not more, than the goal itself.   For Andrea, there is nothing meaningful that happens between her showing up at work and her next day off.

I think the same may be  true of Andy.  He wants to graduate high school, but he can’t get motivated enough to do what  he needs to do to finish, perhaps because there is no meaning in it for him.  This wouldn’t shock me–Andy might be the smartest kid I have ever  taught.  He  is likely bored by high school.  Of course, if we are bored and uninterested in what we are doing, it becomes virtually impossible to derive any meaning from it.

I tried to answer Andy as honestly as I could.  He’s here to get his diploma.  If that is the single most meaningful thing in his life right now,  he could do it–and in his case, with very little effort.   However, if he  is encumbered by the fact that  a lot of what he is being asked to do is purposeless–well, he’s right.  It’s high school.  A lot of it is stupid.  A lot of it is pointless.  A lot of it will be so unimportant in a few years, it will disappear down the memory hole, never to resurface again.  As I frequently tell my students:  if you ever meet someone my age who says high school was the best time of his life, run like hell away from him, because his life sucks in ways you couldn’t possibly imagine.

So I asked Andy what he ultimately wanted–to walk in graduation with his fellow seniors?  To walk away early to adult ed or a GED test?  To stay at home until his parents died and it becomes his?   He confessed that he was afraid of those choices, because he didn’t want to be a quitter (I think he actually meant being  judged a quitter by his parents, but that’s just my supposition).  I told him there was no shame in quitting something he found meaningless.   Ultimately, though, he was going to have to figure that out on his own.

He thanked me for the advice, and he left me hoping I had been of some use to him.  Then I started thinking about what kept me motivated at a sometimes thankless job that despite some common misconceptions, doesn’t pay very much and eats up a great deal of energy.  And though I will be the first to admit that I am happy on Friday afternoons, and relieved at the end of the school year, those are rarely at the forefront of my mind.  Indeed, I am sometimes asked how many days are left in the school year, and I take it as a good sign that I rarely know.

So what does motivate me?  Relationships.  The relationships with my students, with my colleagues, with the materials and ideas I teach.  I find meaning in all of these.  Indeed, I would argue that relationships are the single most important factor in a successful classroom and school.

In fact, I will argue that extensively in my next post.