ENGL105 Essay #2 Mindset PDF

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In the current world of comparisons, supremacy, and league tables, academic success is a significant factor to stand out among the crowds and lead an easy and prosperous life. Every individual who enrolls in college knows the value of educational success in their lives and they yearn for it. However...

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ENGL 100 November 9th

Growth Mindset- The Secret Of Successful Students

In the current world of comparisons, supremacy, and league tables, academic success is a significant factor to stand out among the crowds and lead an easy and prosperous life. Every individual who enrolls in college knows the value of educational success in their lives and they yearn for it. However, some students struggle a lot more than others to do good in school. Despite extreme hard-work on their studies, some students remain under-achieved while few others earn A’s and B’s with ease. Numerous studies have been done to understand why this happens and how to help struggling students to learn better. According to Carol S. Dweck’s book Mindset: The New Psychology Of Success, the answer lies in their mindsets. Stanford professor of Psychology, P.H.D Dweck divides mindsets into two categories- Growth and Fixed mindset. Those who think that their skills, abilities, and intelligence are fixed belong to the fixed mindset category and those who think that their skills and abilities can be nurtured belong to the growth mindset category. According to Dweck , students with a growth mindset are more likely to achieve success in their student life than those with the fixed mindset. This is because having a growth mindset can help people learn better as they are more open to challenges, negative feedbacks, and learn from their mistakes. Since education is all about extending a person’s knowledge and improving his/her skills and intelligence, learning from mistakes and cherishing

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challenges is very vital. In short, students with the growth mindset are more successful than those with the fixed mindset.

In her book, Dweck provides the idea of two mindsets and its effect on our success and achievement in our life. She also explains how a simple belief has the power to transform your psychology and your life. Dweck said, “The view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value(6)”. A simple belief of mindset can help you achieve in student life too. Having a fixed mindset leads us to believe that our qualities are carved in stone; likewise, we have a certain amount of intelligence. On contrary to the fixed mindset, having a growth mindset leads you to believe that our basic qualities are things that can be nurtured through efforts. For instance, a fixed mindset person would lose all his confidence if he gets a ‘C’ on his set, while a growth mindset person wouldn’t evaluate himself on the basis of a single test and would put extra effort on the chapters he is weak at. That’s why, having a growth mindset will help a student to improve continuously without getting affected by grades; thus, students with the growth mindset are more successful as students. Every one of us, once in our life, has met a person who had very good grades in school but is not doing so well in college or probably is failing. Dweck said, “It’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest”(5). According to Dweck, the reason lies behind how they perceive the labels they are given. In a fixed mindset, labels define a person of who he/she is, determine what he/she can or cannot achieve in future and can stain one’s image. So good or bad, labels act as a force which obstructs a fixed mindset person from achieving or even improving(Dweck 100). On contrary, a growth mindset person is unaffected by labels as they

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believe it doesn’t determine what they can achieve and who they are. For example, my sister who was labeled ‘unintellectual’ by every teacher of her school on her 5th grade, started outperforming every student of her class when she was in her 8th grade. Thanks to her growth mindset, she remained unaffected by the labels and focused on her studies. It is clear that failure and label can define a person with fixed mindset in a permanent way, and they are always in danger of being measured. But for a person with a growth mindset, failures don’t define them and they believe their basic qualities can be improved (Dweck 39). Conclusively, students with the growth mindset are indifferent to labels and approach things that matter the most with effort and confidence. That’s why they are more successful as students.

Two years ago, I took my first English class. Learning a second language is a very difficult and demanding task. Just two weeks after enrolling, I dropped out from the class thinking I can never learn English. But due to strong desire to pursue my education in U.S, I took another English class with Mr. Shyam Gyani. That’s when I came to know how a person can transcend their mindset into you and make you achieve what seemed impossible and most importantly, how much impact can a teacher have in their student’s psychology and their way of thinking. A.P.J Abdul Kalam said, “Teacher is he who can shape the character, caliber, and future of an individual”. Mr. Gyani taught me English, but on top of that, he taught me a mindsetgrowth mindset- how human beings can learn everything and anything with effort, dedication, and belief. He admired me for my effort and passion for learning English. He taught me to not believe in things such as talent or innatism. Two years from then, and now I am writing a whole essay in English without breaking a sweat. Hence, to help people succeed in school and life, we should teach them to have a growth mindset which will encourage them to focus on effort rather

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than intelligence or talent (Dweck 64). Admittedly, a teacher with a growth mindset is capable of putting his students into the growth mindset trait; thus, help them achieve more. In conclusion, students who take classes with such professors, who have a growth mindset, do good in those particular subjects and achieve success in academics.

“A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants. A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind on to what is”, said Lao Tzu, an ancient Chinese philosopher and writer, in his book ‘Tao Te Ching’. It clearly indicates that to gain success in studies or in any other thing, we need to free ourselves from our ego and be open to feedbacks, new concepts and everything that helps us to achieve more. Not having an ego of what we know or what we have achieved is the only way we can learn new things. This is what Mindset describes as one of the characters of a person with the growth mindset. Such people are always searching for ways that can help them to be better than they already are. In contrast, “Fixed mindset people want to be the only big fish so that when they compare themselves to those around them, they can feel a cut above the rest” (Dweck 112). Fixed mindset students’ ego obstructs them from learning from their mistakes or even from their classmates. Because in the fixed mindset, “You are not a work in progress, you’re a finished product. And finished products have to protect themselves, lament, and blame. Everything but take charge”(103). So, when they are given chance of improving their knowledge or learn from their mistakes, they prefer hiding their mistakes and they don’t take chances that can expose their flaws. Since imperfection is unendurable in the fixed mindset (Dweck 109), their knowledge and intelligence remain almost constant. Unquestionably, students with the fixed mindset underperform those with the growth mindset in their student life.

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According to an interview given to ‘The College Journal’ by George Dantzig, he described an unusual incident that happened in his life. A graduate student in Berkeley, George once ran into his class late and assumed that the two problems written on the board were a homework assignment and jot them down. When he went back home, he had a hard time solving those questions. Only after he had solved those questions and handed it to his professor as a regular assignment, he came to know it actually was the two unsolved problems of ‘Mathematical Statistics’. Dantzig was someone who truly believed in that effort counts more than anything else. His persistence and determination is a personal trait of a person with a growth mindset. “For students with the growth mindset, it doesn’t make sense to stop trying. For them, adolescence is a time of opportunity: a time to learn new subjects, a time to find out what they like what they want to be in the future”(59), says Dweck. Students with the growth mindset don’t give up and are very persistence in what they get involved with. On contrary, students with fixed mindset give up very easily and don’t tend to make efforts. They are often scared of making efforts because it robs them from all the excuses, and they believe that effort is for those who lack ability (Dweck 43). Consequently, they lack determination and persistence due to the fear of making efforts and often fall back in terms of a learning process. In conclusion, students with the growth mindset are more determined and more persistent towards their studies which are the main reasons why they are more successful as students.

Mindset has a powerful impact on ourselves and how we view this world. Since students with the growth mindset are more successful than those with the fixed mindset, teaching growth mindset to students is a way to help struggling students to do better. As Dweck mentioned in her

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book Mindset that we have a choice and we can change our mindset. We should let children grow up in a growth mindset environment, where they are not judged for having an innate talent or for not being precocious. It also is a responsibility of teachers to create an appropriate environment for children that allows them to learn better through effort rather than leading them to believe that talent is more important. Then only, we can expect better results from students and children and help them achieve success as a student.

WORKS CITED

Dweck, Carol S. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006. Print. Anu James . "Teachers' Day 2016: the Importance of Teaching Profession." International Business Times, India Edition. International Business Times, India Edition, 2016. Web. 21 Nov.

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2016. Cottle, Richard W. 2006. “George B.Dantzig: a legendary life in mathematical programming.” Mathematical Programming 105, no. 1: 1-8. Academic Search Premier, EBSCO. Laozi, and Stephen Mitchel. Tao Te Ching. London: Frances Lincoln, 1999. Print....