Back when Alex started high school, he wasn't motivated to study. He was, however, motivated to hang out with his friends and have fun. That all changed during his sophomore year. At that time, my other older brother Thomas had just gotten into Stanford, so one weekend Alex went up to visit him. Thomas took him around the campus and to a college party. When he came back from that trip, he vowed to do well in school so that he could go to a university as "cool" as Stanford. By the time he graduated, he had a 4.3 GPA. Alex, before he visited Stanford, was a good example of an underachiever. As Jen Thames puts perfectly in "The Top Five Reasons Students Fail to Succeed in School," "Many students are underachievers; although capable of completing their school work, they lack the initiative or motivation to succeed. These are students that can do the work, are highly intelligent, but have decided that there are other things that are more important" (Thames pg 2). It was only when Alex realized that school was the most important that he became an exemplary student.
That's why it's so important for people to understand that the biggest thing missing in our school system is motivation. Writing essays, taking math tests, and studying monotonous facts for history tests can seem so boring to a student that without motivation it will seem pointless. As Kathryn R. Wentzel from the University of Maryland College Park writes in "Social Relationships and Motivation in Middle School: The Role of Parents, Teachers, and Peers," "Studies of intrinsic motivation have related high levels of interest to valuing, engaging in, and persisting at a specific test" (Wentzel par 7). So, it is important to increase interest in order to get the students engaged in any given topic. The best way to increase interest is by increasing motivation, and the best way to do this is by making a goal.