By Dr. Adam Galarza

Nearly four in ten students who start college never complete a credential, and the research is consistent about why: adult learners disengage when a course feels like an obstacle in their life story rather than a chapter within it. This post introduces main character energy, a narrative-identity framework the author developed and presented at Purdue Global’s 18th Annual General Education Conference. Grounded in narrative identity theory, self-determination theory, and self-authorship research, the framework uses writing — origin-story reflections, goal-mapping, and “plot twist” journaling — to help students experience themselves as protagonists of their own education rather than passengers moving through it.

I still remember the first time a student told me, unprompted, that a discussion post “actually meant something” to them. It was not the assignment I had hoped would land — it was a low-stakes reflection prompt I had almost cut for time. That moment has stayed with me because it is rare. If you teach online general education, working with adult learners juggling jobs, children, and a dozen competing obligations, moments like that can feel harder to come by than they should.

They should not be rare, and the data tells us why they are. Nearly four in ten students who start college — 39% — do not complete a credential within six years (National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, 2024). Ryan and Deci (2017) identify the leading barrier to persistence for adult learners as a lack of personal relevance: students do not see themselves in the curriculum, so the course reads as a roadblock in their lives rather than a chapter within them. The reverse is just as striking. McAdams and McLean (2013) found that when students connect course content to their own life stories, experiencing themselves as protagonists rather than passengers, they are three times more likely to persist. That is not a soft outcome. It is a retention strategy hiding inside a writing prompt.

Our students already have language for this, even when we do not. “Main character energy” is a phrase that circulates through TikTok and Instagram, describing a mindset: treating one’s own life as a story worth telling and moving through it with agency and intention. Moana does not leave her island because someone assigned her a research paper; she leaves because her internal story demands it. That instinct is narrative identity in action, and it is more than a classroom metaphor. Rogers et al. (2023) ran eight studies testing whether reframing one’s life as a Hero’s Journey could causally increase meaning and resilience. It did. Their re-storying intervention is, in effect, what a well-designed writing prompt can do at the start of a course.

Main character energy sits at the intersection of four research traditions. Narrative identity theory holds that people construct a sense of self through an evolving inner story, and a nine-year longitudinal study confirms that agency-driven narratives predict long-term well-being and persistence (Lind et al., 2024; McAdams & McLean, 2013). Self-determination theory holds that intrinsic motivation depends on autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and narrative writing tasks can activate all three at once (Ryan & Deci, 2017). Self-authorship research identifies the central developmental task of adult learners as the shift from following someone else’s formula to authoring their own values and voice, which is precisely what general education is meant to produce (Baxter Magolda, 2001). The Hero’s Journey research cited above (Rogers et al., 2023) supplies a causal mechanism connecting all three: narrative framing changes how people experience adversity, not only how they describe it afterward.

I organize the classroom application of this framework into three acts, since the whole argument is that story structure motivates students. Act I, the origin story, happens in Week 1: before any content is taught, students write a short reflection on who they are, what brought them to this course at this point in their life, and what they have already overcome just to show up. It is a low-stakes writing task that sends a clear signal: your history matters here. Act II, rising action, reframes the writing assignments themselves. A “complete this assignment” instruction becomes “write this chapter,” and a Professional Protagonist Goal Map asks students to connect the specific skill they are practicing in an essay or discussion post to the professional they are becoming. Act III, overcoming obstacles, addresses what happens when a draft falls short. A Plot Twist Reflection Journal gives students a structured way to write through a disappointing grade or a rejected argument, reframing it as the scene that makes the ending matter rather than the end of the story. McAdams and McLean’s (2013) work on redemptive narrative suggests that how a student writes about a setback shapes persistence more than the setback itself.

Every one of these tools is, at bottom, a writing intervention, which is exactly why this framework belongs in a Writing Across the Curriculum conversation rather than a motivational-poster one. We already ask students to write their way through general education: discussion boards, reflections, professional statements, and capstones. Main character energy does not add assignments; it changes what those assignments ask students to author. A generic elevator-pitch prompt becomes a “brand statement origin story,” tracing the thread from a student’s actual background to a professional identity the student can defend in their own words. A communication scenario becomes a scene that the student must navigate as its protagonist, producing writing with genuine audience awareness rather than generic “audience analysis.” None of this requires redesigning a course. It requires rewriting a handful of prompts so that the students composing responses to them are also, unmistakably, composing themselves.

Every student who logs into an online course is already the main character of their own story. They arrive at the mid-plot, carrying a history we have not read and a future they have not yet written. Our job as instructors is not to interrupt that story with an assignment that feels disconnected from it. It is to hand students a pen and a better prompt and let them keep writing.

References

Baxter Magolda, M. B. (2001). Making their own way: Narratives for transforming higher education to promote self-development. Stylus Publishing.

Lind, M., Ture, S., McAdams, D. P., & Cowan, H. R. (2024). Narrative identity, traits, and trajectories of depression and well-being: A 9-year longitudinal study. Psychological Science, 35(12), 1325–1339. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976241296512 

McAdams, D. P., & McLean, K. C. (2013). Narrative identity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(3), 233–238. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413475622

National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. (2024). Yearly progress and completion report. https://nscresearchcenter.org/yearly-progress-and-completion/

Rogers, B. A., Chicas, H., Kelly, J. M., Kubin, E., Christian, M. S., Kachanoff, F. J., Berger, J., Puryear, C., McAdams, D. P., & Gray, K. (2023). Seeing your life story as a Hero’s Journey increases meaning in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 125(4), 752–778. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000341 

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2017). Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and wellness. Guilford Press.

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About the Author

Dr. Adam Galarza is a faculty member in Purdue Global’s School of Multidisciplinary and Professional Studies. He holds a Doctor of Education from Purdue Global, a Master of Science in Business from Full Sail University, and a BFA in Theatre, and draws on years as an entertainment and human resources professional.