Storm's Motivators

Storm and I had such an interesting talk about her and school.  After observing her, I realized that Storm is one of the top students in all of her classes, not just in ours.  I was adamant to get to the point of what motivates Storm to get such good grades and participate so actively in classes.  Her answer: nothing.  She said she hates school, she doesn’t particularly like writing, and she couldn’t care less about grades.  Until this point, I won’t lie, I had seen almost all of my past self in Storm.  When Storm told me that she didn’t care about grades, only her parents do, I was baffled.  She had said it before, but she really meant it!

We went on with the interview and we came to a question about where she thinks her abilities lie in comparison to her other peers.  She answered truthfully that she felt she was ahead of most of her peers, but that her friends are the top ten of the class and she’s thirteen, so in comparison to them she never feels above average.  At this point, I pointed out to her that she is ahead of most of her peers and I also mentioned that she actively participates even when the teacher doesn’t ask for anyone to.  I asked her what her motivation was. What follows is one of the most insightful things to ever come out of a fifteen-year-old’s mouth ever in all of time:

"I don't like to think about that because I don't like compliments, so it's weird.  And I don't want people to think I'm like, "let's go to school!" because I hate school. I hate school. I don't really like the idea of school. I go cause it's required and you can get a good job and stuff but I don't like coming off as someone who's enthusiastic about the idea of learning...even though I kind of am...but I like to get my ideas out. I feel like the way people perceive you, no matter if it's true or not, that is what you are because the world is how everyone sees something. So even if I'm not stupid, if everyone thinks I am, I am because that's how it's determined kind of. So I feel like I need to be very clear with everything- if I have an opinion or something, I need to get it out there cause I don't want someone to get the wrong idea about me. It's kind of self-conscious on my part, but, you know..."

So yes. So. Much. Insight.  I’m not sure that many average teenagers think this way, which is why it was so cool to have this little window into Storm’s mind.  The thing that is even cooler is that that night I went home and read Beer’s chapters about motivation and basically connected everything to what Storm said.  Storm’s motivators are internal so they’re very strong and, lucky for her, they correlate directly with school. 

Storm surprised me again when we discussed reading.  It makes sense in the context of the above quote, but before I understood her motivations I was surprised.  She told me that she hates to read anything someone gives her to read.  If she’s not required to read, she’ll read anything, apparently.  This goes back to different motivators.  It’s really good to know this about Storm! I know that she’ll read the books, though, because she doesn’t want to appear dumb. 

Enough about motivators.  I should throw in here quickly that Storm and I also discussed the possibility of her being a fashion blogger.  This, she claims, is the only time she would ever want to write outside of school.  She is already thinking of creating media (something Jenkins mentions as being essential to technological literacy).