At the beginning of high school, I was prepared for a wild ride filled with stress, frustration, and even anger. I was told that in grade 10, school was going to become a struggling time filled with 4 a.m. homework sessions, several cups of coffee per day, and taking solace from my friends saying “I haven’t started either”. Yet, on the first day of school, I realized my biggest struggle was not going to be understanding how DNA replication worked, or memorizing all the dates of the American Revolution, but instead changing who I was as a person. My biggest challenge for grade 11 was developing my growth mindset.
A growth mindset means a lot of things to a student, such as being creative and original, but above all of that I think a growth mindset should give a person optimism for the future, along with the need to improve. I was introduced to this idea of a growth mindset on my first day of grade 11 Biology 20, and when I had first heard about the ideas of a “fixed” and “growth” mindset, I simply thought that these ideas were just a bunch of baloney that I would never need to get a good mark in the class. Was I ever wrong. I quickly came to realize that a growth mindset was going to be the one thing that got me through all the failures and tough times in my future years, and I hope to share that with you.
As students, many of us are often raised in environments where we are told that we aren’t good enough to meet the expectations of others. We often go straight to the thoughts of “I’m stupid” or “I’m never going to be good enough” as the solution to our problems. And though it may seem like we are just being pessimistic, it really isn’t our fault at times. As children some of us are raised hearing phrases such as “you’re dumb” or “you’re fat” on a regular basis, and though most people think it is no big deal, it really does have an impact on the mindset of developing minds. So when a student does poorly on a test and then says “I’m never going to get better”, chances are they aren’t going to get better any time soon, because they live with that mentality. Even when people know they are beating themselves down for no good reason, they still choose to continue this cycle of thinking negatively of themselves. The solution to their problems is actually quite simple: to change the way they think.
A growth mindset is not easy to achieve; it really isn’t. It may sound simple to say: “I’m going to thinking positively for the rest of my life!”, but there will always be moments when life comes over and pounds you down with a sledgehammer. It is inevitable. The best thing you can do is pick yourself back up and walk forward again, learning your mistakes on the way. Instead of thinking to yourself: “I am an awful student”, think “I need to start improving to be a good student.” A growth mindset doesn’t just mean thinking positively all the time, it means opening your mind to more solutions and methods to improve your problems. The message is simple:
“The belief of who you are will colour every single behaviour that you are involved with in the rest of your life.” 1
Hey, no one ever said life was going to be easy. What is more important is you being able to accept who you are as a person, your strengths and weaknesses, and then improve from there.
