Intrinsic Motivation

This semester, I took accounting and economics at Bethel. I have always really enjoyed school. However, this semester, more than ever, I experienced intrinsic motivation or "motivation associated activities that are there own reward." In other words, the freedom to just learn for the sake of learning pervaded my experience in these two classes. Economics helped me to think more about how and why we make decisions. Accounting was like solving these cool puzzles that also happened to be quite practical - like developing a mortgage amortization schedule or calculating present and future values of money. Tonight, though, my professor said something that just really took me by surprise. After turning in the final, he handed me my last homework assignment and held out his hand. I thought that was kind of strange, but I shook his hand. He said, "In all my years of teaching, you were by far the best student I have ever had." What? That just floored me. However, some things really started to make sense to me. I like school. I like learning. I like being a student. The cool thing is that it isn't even about grades anymore - it is about learning. Is it possible to be a professional student? That would be amazing.