Fixed in My Ways

"I'm proud of you."

"You're so smart."

"Good job! I'm not surprised at all."

These are the kinds of words that were given to me when my high school report cards were sent home. I loved it. I felt like I was really something. Someone. I had value. 

Near the end of high-school, I was good at everything except German (but really, who is?). I was in the best sets, I got the best grades, I was even voted as the 2nd place school "genius," beaten only by an American transfer student (who didn't really count since he had only been with us for a few months... right?). I had the world at my feet. But... what would I do with myself now that I had a choice in what direction my life would take? I didn't really have any passions, I didn't have any life goals besides having a family, I had no career aspirations whatsoever. I knew I had to go to college (that's what the people who were smart did), so I chose 4 things I enjoyed and applied for a place studying A-Levels at college; Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Art. 

When I started college at 16 (the usual age to start college in the UK), I had every confidence that I would be successful. I was a great student. I would excel. What could go wrong? 

Well, it turns out that being naturally smarter than everyone else in my high-school class just wasn't enough to get good grades in college. With no end goal in mind, and no real drive to study, I skipped classes, ignored homework and let my education take a backseat to enjoying life as a teenager with more freedom than was prudent. It wasn't like high-school where you would get into trouble for slacking off (which I would never have done for fear of the embarrassment of detention). College was a place where self motivation and discipline reigned. Hard work was the building blocks of success and I was sorely lacking.

See, I had never really had to try before. Everything except German had come naturally to me, and when that became hard, I resigned myself to the fact that I was just not gifted with languages. I couldn't be perfect at everything, so I didn't even try. Little did I know that my seldom acknowledged and often hidden GCSE result of a "D" in German, was a symptom of an unrealized defect in my patterns of thought, and not a natural result of my inherited inability to learn a different language.

In Carol Dweck's Ted Talk entitled The Power of Yet, she introduces two mindsets that are labelled "Fixed" and "Growth." People with a fixed mindset believe that their "intelligence is fixed and cannot be improved much by effort" whereas people with a growth mindset "believe that they can increase their abilities by working harder" (Tirri, K. and Kujala, T. (2016) Students’ Mindsets for Learning and Their Neural Underpinnings. Psychology, 7, 1231-1239.)

Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't go around thinking to myself that I only had a fixed amount of intelligence and could never learn anything beyond that. I did, however, believe that if something was too hard for me to understand quickly and with little effort, I was just not intelligent enough to understand it and should try something else. Learning had always been easy, and I believed that was how intelligence worked. If you learned it, you were smart; if you didn't, you weren't. Hadn't I been told that my parents had earned lower grades in school because they were not as smart as I was? Hadn't I been praised for that intelligence? I truly believed that hard work had nothing to do with my intelligence and ability to learn.

This fixed mindset and my subsequent lack of hard work earned me very poor grades in the end of year college examinations. I couldn't have moved on even if I had wanted to. I was mortified. I determined right then that I would start the school year over and work harder to get better grades. Unfortunately, due to my lack of habits that supported hard work, my next year's grades were only marginally better. My final A-Level grades were an embarrassment. I earned three D's and an E. 

In reaction to my failure, one that Carol Dweck described as typical of someone with a fixed mindset, I ran. I decided that I had tried and failed, that college was too hard for me and that I didn't really need it anyway. I got a job, got married and had children. 

Fast-forward 11 years to 2017. My life took an unexpected turn and I realized that not having an education as a mother left me in a very vulnerable position. Without a degree, attaining a job which would provide for my family would be very difficult. I decided that I needed to go back to school. Through hard work, and yes, natural intelligence, I was able to reestablish my educational standard as a straight A student. I still struggle with having a fixed mindset, several times I have withdrawn from a class rather than getting a lower grade, but maturity, experience, and a clear educational goal has broadened my thought patterns to include many characteristics of people with growth mindsets. I hope that as I continue to take classes which challenge the limits of my capabilities, and as I develop the habits of hard work and determination that are an essential precursor to success, my brain will adapt, learn, and change, and my thought patterns will become less fixed in their ways.

"The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work." ~Anonymous.