Growth Mindset

Have you ever been in a class and had an assignment that you struggled with? When you finally got your grade back, you wondered why another person in your class always does extremely well on those things whereas you do just well enough to pass? Then thought to yourself, “well that person was just born able to excel in these things”. Well, this is where the idea of growth/fixed mindsets stems from.

You see, the idea of a fixed mindset and a growth mindset is the idea that as the author and scholar Carol Dweck explained in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, a growth mindset is an idea that our brains are infinitely able to learn subject matters so as long as we persist through working out the issue. Whereas a fixed mindset is pretty self-explanatory in that, it comes from the thought that our brains have a fixed knowledge range. Or in other words, some people can learn about physics better than others because it was how their brains developed at birth.

Now let me tell you a story, the year was 2001 and a sibling of mine who would always struggle with math always had to sit down with our father late nights after work to get tutoring help after dinner. He could never seem to fathom math throughout his public school life. He’d rather build things with Legos and be in local spelling bees. This is where he seemed to excel. But when it came to math up to Geometry in high school, he struggled so much to grasp most of the ideas that he never actually took Algebra 2. A class that all the other kids took. He was held back to splitting algebra (normally a year-long course) into 2 years. But once high school ended and college had begun, He had to take a placement test to enroll in a math class that he could take in his freshman year. After he took this test, to his surprise, he ended up placing in one of the top math classes, you could take at that college. . . Honors Calculus. He placed so high and scored so well, test instructors mentioned that that was one of the highest scores they'd ever seen in years. When finally brought his test score home, he showed our parents in excitement, they said “We knew you had this ability in you the whole time. You were just doubting yourself your whole life.”

The point of this story is that with enough persistence, anybody can excel, any subject matter. And another thing, that this sibling is no sibling at all, but rather myself. I’ve struggled with math my entire life. I was always doubting myself in my head that I would never get it. That I was never born to understand it. But throughout my struggle. And hard work ethic, I managed to grasp it. Way better than I ever thought I had inside me. I had teachers that always pushed and encouraged me, saying that I would understand it if I tried hard enough.