Growth Mindset

(Reset Your Mind: MaxPixel)

While learning about the Growth Mindset detailed by Carol Dweck, I felt personally called out by a lot of what she was explaining. I definitely have had a fixed mindset growing up in life. My parents have usually praised me whenever I did well on an assignment or a test. There was never really constant support for the process or learning material. I distinctly remember being compared to my sister, and my parents would say that my sister would usually get the answer faster, and that was seen as better. To be fair, this is quite a common mindset for the professional world. Employers are constantly looking for the best, smartest, and fastest people they can hire. The professional world can simply not go fast enough. This is probably a major factor into why the majority of people have developed this fixed mindset and used this methodology to define their learning processes.

This fixed mindset has had a detrimental effect on my college experience. I made straight A's in high school, and then when I got to college, that was not the case anymore. I was told that a B was a good grade when my entire life I had been raised with the idea that an A was always the goal. Engineering is full of difficult classes, and the Growth Mindset would have really helped me push through when I did not understand a concept. Instead, I was usually graded harshly, and there was no real encouragement for trying harder on the next test because I often already had a poor foundation. This often led to me not even wanting to attempt some assignments because I knew that even if I tried, my answers would never be good enough for the professor at the time.

I really do wish more professors spent more emphasis on teaching us about the process instead of just caring about the right numbers. The concept of not yet is appealing to me because I know I am capable if given the time, but I am usually heavily scheduled throughout the semester. This usually results in me not being given a decent chance to fully understand all of the material. Not yet would provide me with motivation because this mindset helps one think that they can learn the material versus the alternative of that they will never get the concept. If Carol Dweck conducts more studies and finds more positive responses to the Growth Mindset, I firmly believe that education as a whole should be restructured to make learning a more positive experience.