What's your motivation?

A strange wind is blowing through town. As all the people in my group enter the anniversary of starting work at our sites, we also endure the pain of going to a conference to talk about what we've done so far. Even worse: share it with new volunteers. The measuring sticks are out and Peace Corps has invited certain people to present, and not invited others, labeled some a success and ...just not labeled others. Even those invited to speak aren't quite sure how much wisdom they have to share. Who are they to say, after all? And what have they really done?

Peace Corps has a very large share of overacheivers. People who had high GPAs and good jobs and all the right "things," but those people jumped ship, came here and tried to start anew. As a lover of dramatic lit, I am always interested in people's motivations. In the framework of running overacheivers, did people come here to break free? To prove that they could do it in an even more complicated setting? To be overwhelmed and prove once and for all that they really just aren't that good? One thing I think we've all be a little shocked to see is just how driven we are to obtain external validation. It's easy to seem internally motivated when you are in an environment that values and utilizes you. But when that goes away who's left?

In addition to being overacheivers, Peace Corps volunteers suffer from a disease to please. People pleasers run amok in the PC and people get run down, distraught and overwhelmed because of it. Peace Corps wants one thing, the organization you are assigned to wants something else, you want something entirely different. Which comes first? Probably not the last. In a conversation with a friend the other day we were talking about how projects and funding are used as a measurement of success here and how misguided and misleading that is. If I came here and taught people nothing, but got them 200,000 Euros in grants, I'd be quite the star. Money is easy to see and kudos are given promptly for it (and from every direction). But... what if you did teach? And work with people and just encourage them to do things differently? It's harder, it's a less obvious success, the appreciation is quiet (at best) and it might even fail. What's the reward there? What's the motivation?

There's no coincidence that I had three volunteers write me today about fearing disappointing someone by what they were doing or not doing or would like to do (like just leave). If just purely motivated by having others validate us, we'd find the money, stick it out and follow orders like a good soldier. But many don't. They question it and torment themselves - not because they stopped needing the approval, but because it's still there, though they know there's something greater. They just aren't sure what It is and where to find It. They just aren't sure how to shake that need to care what others think. When you spend your whole life getting As, it's not done quietly - it's presented at assemblies, put up in hallways and on certificates. It really starts to define you. So, at grading time, the list without your name on it seems terribly impossible. Someone must have made a mistake. There's been some horrible error...

A friend told me today that I was really good at following the spirit of the law, as opposed to the letter of the law and that it was something of a defining characteristic of mine. It's certainly something I've tried to do - to get at the higher point of what rules and guidelines were aiming for, not the laws themselves. I debated with my professors, wrote papers that I knew wouldn't be popular and took the harder classes even when it meant a guaranteed lower GPA because I wanted an education, not just a degree. Here, I want similar things. I want to help without enabling; educate, but not demean; and create without destruction. Unfortunately, despite its hippy past, a government bureaucracy isn't the best place for such lofty goals. And yet, I stay...