Growth Mindset

From A Growth Mindset by Matthew Syed

I've actually heard about the growth mindset really recently from the Dean of University College, Nicole Campbell. She came and gave a presentation to the Engineering Dean's Leadership Council Mentors during a workshop we had, and it honestly surprised me that there was a way of thought in the world that said one's natural aptitude for a particular subject or part of life was all they had to work with. It all seemed so obvious! Of course, anyone has the ability to learn- what more could you need? After that thought, I was surprised again, because for a long time (and sometimes still) the very thing I was scoffing at, I believed to be true of myself.

Having been praised as a child for being very smart and talented, I believed it was natural intelligence that led me to high test scores and straight A's. Looking back, I think it was much more due to the fact that you couldn't tear a book out of my hands if you had wanted to; I read constantly. Reading aside, I got my first B in seventh grade. It was in Algebra One, and I deserved it. I was disorganized, I lost my homework all the time, and wasn't prepared for class on a daily basis. When I saw that B on my report card, I was devastated. Thirteen years old, and already a failure.

But no matter! I could come back from it. I worked my tail off and got back on the straight A track through high school. My days of failure were finally, finally behind me. I joked with my peers that the first B made other failures easier, though I was lying and I knew it. That B haunted me for years, always a menace in my mind, at the back of my thoughts during tests- until, lo and behold, my senior year of high school, I got a second one.

Did I handle it any better? Nope. Devastation. AP Physics had bested me. Eighteen years old, an official failure, one semester left to go and my 4.0 was gone.

The difference was that this time, there was a tiny voice in my brain that said, 'Let's brush ourselves off, put a band-aid on our knees, and learn from it.'

I got an A in AP Physics the next semester, my last in high school. For the first time, I attributed that A to hard work instead of whatever natural intelligence I was born with. I earned it. I fought for that A by putting time in to study, by going to night lectures, by doing whatever I could to learn.

Have I gotten my fair share of B's since then? Yep. I've even racked up a C to put on my wall. I'm not proud of that one- that was a particularly rough pill to swallow- but I do know that every day, I try to put in the work, to put in the time and dedication to get better at something. I danced all through school, and I never did well at anything in ballet by trying it once, failing, getting frustrated, and quitting. I did a thousand single turns before I ever squeaked out a double. I fell out of a million doubles trying for the ever elusive triple.

As I head into this semester, it's easy to sometimes see the mountain of work that lies ahead of me and get scared, or frustrated, or discouraged. Sometimes this gets to me- I end up thinking, "Everyone around me is far smarter than me, I'm not smart enough to be an engineer, I'm not a good enough leader, this must come so easily to everyone else, why is it so hard for me?"

When that happens, I tend to call my mom. She always tells me just to "put one foot in front of the other", which happens to be a song from Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town, a truly wonderful claymation Christmas movie with Fred Astaire that I recommend to anyone interested. It's a good reminder to me that growth happens slowly, it's an iterative process, and that sometimes I'm gonna fall- but I also might fly.

The Growth Mindset is a daily challenge in itself, and I look forward to more fully implementing it in my life.

This video is too good and relevant not to share. Put One Foot In Front Of The Other, from the movie Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town.