From what I understand, it is part of that schizoid spectrum that people don't think it is a problem.

I was also not motivated by grades when I was a student. I often had the top grades without much effort, and sometimes also poorer ones or fails due to total lack of effort. I figured it was way too easy to get good grades for me, or at least pass, when I wanted, and learned to manipulate that system very easily. So that I could study and do things in my own ways whenever. I had some quite hard times in the beginning of grad school (I was in a very thorough and competitive PhD program) to realize that my manipulations and superficial learning methods would not work anymore. Then I learned to appreciate the academic evaluation system... some. Still, my PhD (in a very competitive program in Switzerland) was a breeze for me and all of my papers from that era were accepted as they were submitted mostly. All that early academic success (up to grad school) definitely made me quite elitist and arrogant.

When I truly learned to appreciate and actually started to feel it intensely was becoming an independent investigator, having to get my own grants, responsible for a large team. It is a very flawed system like therapy, but I do tend to feel devastated when I get poor scores on my grants especially (and also, to some extent, on my papers). In part, because I know I am creative, analytical and a good writer. Why do those people give me such *** evaluations/feedback sometimes? I usually rage internally or with a friend/colleague for a day and that's it, then I get to work and try to resolve it. I tend to be very good at handling rebuttals and resubmissions, if I have the motivation to deal with them.

As to motivating students, I have had some similar experiences, stopdog. I just use methods I've learned in management classes, therapy, or from my own observations in life, and they work. Many of those methods would never work on me, so I do mostly apply them as some kind of robot or AI system.