Student motivation journal club: If it’s bigger than you, the boring is worth it: the power of self-transcending motivation on menial tasks

Posted by Rhett Mcdaniel on Monday, October 28, 2019 in Commentary, News.

By Faith Rovenolt, CFT undergraduate intern, and Heather Fedesco, CFT Assistant Director

Unfortunately, it’s hard to avoid the boring in learning. Inevitably, even in the most exciting fields, students need to learn and do a boring, menial, or repetitive task. In STEM, this is especially true. You can’t learn to plot the path of a rocket without first knowing algebra, and oftentimes, students might not even have the bigger picture to frame why they might be learning something. This leaves students frustrated and bored, and in the modern era, surrounded by dozens of other more interesting things that are far more distracting than a math problem set. Why chant through Latin declensions when there are social media and the latest season of a show on Netflix? [more]