One of the things that caught my attention when I first started playing Scholar was reading Kanican's livejournal and looking at all the cool things he had done. After carefully reading through his scholar guide, I took his advice to heart, and still use a lot of the techniques he mentions. For example, the macros I use for stratagems are set up so that I blink through the animations.
My inspiration to play SCH began there, but ever since Kanican quit and stopped updating the FFXI section of his livejournal, I have found inspiration in other scholars.
One example is this video of a SCH soloing Shinryu without a brew (before Regen V and the Cure adjustments):
FFXI - SCH Shinryu Solo
Despite the fact that I don't attempt these sorts of things often, there is something very fulfilling about playing a job when you know that it holds the sort of power needed to accomplish these things.
So that being said, what sorts of things keep you motivated to play scholar?