Curiosity & Motivation

I remember one of my brilliant classmates, Rajeev. He was one of my close friends. Everybody knows him, believes, he will be a rank holder in the state examinations that year.

The best quality I saw in him was his curiosity. He was always curious to learn more than in the prescribed textbooks. He used to read lot and experiment things he learned.
He always seems to be confident to face any challenges. Whenever he talks about study subjects, I used to tease him by asking “Who? Why? What?” He used to get answers to most of my questions. It was from him I learned, being curious is one of the best methods to learn more, or curiosity is a strong motivator of learning.

Scoring less than hundred percent was a rare story for Rajeev. His self-efficacy was in a high level. His previous success at studies made him confident of doing anything. He always thinks about great people and thinks about getting similar success in his life. He always listens to people who says, “You are the best, or you can do it”.

However, things changed towards the end of the graduating months. He seems to be anxious about his studies. One time he advice me to study with out sleeping to get the best marks. If he is loosing one point in the class test, he seems to be very much disturbed.

Final examination days become the most difficult days for Rajeev. On the first day of examination, he did well in the mathematics paper. Since the school expects very good marks for him, his mathematics teacher went through his answers and asked him to go through the papers once again.

While doing that he found a small error in the answer, then another one. He jumped out of the examination hall and threw his answer sheets into the air. All the people around him were upset. He did not write any more exams afterwards.

All these happed because of his excessive anxiety and the anxiety of his parents, relatives, and teachers.

There after for long time he was not able to study anything. The lesson I learned from my classmate is that “excessive anxiety can interfere with learning and performance, leading to a reduction in continuing motivation to learn”.

Reference: Driscoll, M (2005). Psychology of Learning For Instruction. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.