How Not To Get Into College Analysis

In both “Somnambulist” and “How not to get into College: The Preoccupation with Preparation”, it is stated that in today’s society, individuals are told to to strive and thrive off of achieving extrinsic happiness rather than working towards achieving intrinsic happiness in order to live a happy and fulfilling life. In “How not to get into College”, Kohn states, “Let grades control your life. All decisions about how to spend your time and plan your academic schedule should be arrived at with grades in mind […] anything that distracts your attention from boosting a grade is time wasted […] always think in terms of product.” (Kohn, 2). The quotation is written in a sarcastic tone, and states that everything that individuals do relates to extrinsic …show more content…
In this quotation, Jones implies that the reason individuals work hard even to the point of exhaustion, is because they will be rewarded with a paycheck in the end rather than working hard to achieve the intrinsic motivation. Therefore, both Kohn and Jones strongly imply that due to individuals thinking only of extrinsic motivators due to societal beliefs, they ignore the intrinsic motivators which are the most important in a person’s life as they motivate and push the person to be better. Secondly, both Kohn and Jones suggest that individuals are so bewitched into believing the hidden agenda within society, that intrinsic motivation becomes null as they begin to look for extrinsic motivators in order to push themselves, all while losing the motivation that comes intrinsically. In Somnambulist, Jones states, “giving students the knowledge and skills to achieve their goals for the benefit of established companies […] trained to the point that we believe our aspiration is to be part of a corporation […] our lives identified with the owner’s name and maybe we could get promoted from laborer to supervisor” (Jones, line