This is my draft for my third paper and it was pretty good with mostly spelling mistakes. I'm glad my only issue for this paper was my grammar because to me that means to me that my writing is good. With the feedback I was able to correct the mistakes that could have gotten me a small amount of points taken off and make the story flow better.
Going to college does feel like a success as no one in my family has ever gone. I’m the first to ever go compared to my mom and dad. They had done so much for me to keep going forward in this experience. I had gone through so much to try to even make it here.
I’m in college to be able to get farther in life compared to my parents. My father has been a restaurant manager since I had been born at the same company and my mom has always been a start at home parent. They both want so much more for me and college will be able to do that. I will get a degree and get a good job so that later on in life I can support them like they did for me. With that going on how do I make sure I don’t lose it all? I don’t want to fail and lose it all, but some failure is needed to move forward. So, it brings me to my question how can failure help me to reach a growth mindset in college?
My search started with a quiz assigned to the class on what type of mindset do I have. The results for this test did not surprise me very much as I agree with everything it said. I agree completely with being unsure in my intelligence as I do have a fear of failure. What I was surprised with was the results saying that it could be holding me back as I never saw it as that I just saw it as being a coward. I do have a fear of failure, but I can overcome it with pushing on and not falling down over small setbacks.
Then one of my next readings that helped me to see how failure can help was from an article titled “You Can Grow Your Brain” within that article it taught me a lot about how the brain is more like a muscle that needs to be exercised not something that is already set in stone. In the article the brain is called a muscle and is needed to be regularly exercised so that it can grow. The article says that it’s “because muscles become larger and stronger with exercise. And when you stop exercising, the muscles shrink and you get weaker” (“You Can Grow Your Brain” 1). That means anyone can get good at something as long as they practice at it an continue the practice and use it often. This tied into my fear of failure from having a fixed mindset and need to look and be smart and not need a lot of help from others as I need to only relay on myself. As in the article, “Even Geniuses Work Hard” it talks about “individuals with a fixed mindset believe that their intelligence is simply an inborn trait -they have a certain amount, and that's that. In contrast, individuals with a growth mindset believe that they can develop their intelligence overtime” (Dweck 474). I agree completely with how the fixed mindset is defined as a static trait that can grow a bit as a child then it stops after a while.
Along with watching the TED talk from Astro Teller on “The Unexpected Benefits of Celebrating Failure” it started to shape my views on failures in a different light. I had never thought to look at failures as a positive at all to me they were always bad and having any meant that I was not doing good. But while watching the video and hearing the speaker say, “sometimes shifting your perspective is more powerful than being smart,” it made me think about all the new things I would figure out after failing at first (Teller 6:53). Then it reminded me of why I was so scared of failure, it was because I have a fear of not making it in college and dropping out. Like how in Kirp’s article “Conquering the Freshman Fear of Failure” they say “regardless of their credentials, many freshmen doubt that they have the necessary brainpower or social adeptness to succeed in college. This fear of failing hits poor, minority and first-generation college students especially hard,” (Kirp 471). I come from a household where I’m the first to go to college and I’m also a minority so to me failure of any kind at this level would be bad. To me it could spell out not being able to go further along in life like others my age and be stuck doing something I will never enjoy.
Now with that out of the way and seeing how that was my fixed mindset in a way talking how can I get a growth mindset now with the fear of failure out of the way? The answer for me is support and positivity. In Dweck’s article and reading how teachers should be making a growth mindset culture in the classroom by giving good praise and encouragement made me think back on some of the classrooms I had been in growing up and how I saw that culture mostly in elementary school and not in middle or high school (Dweck 475). Thinking back on this I also see why I struggled in my failures as there was no good support systems during my middle and high school years but now in college it has gotten better. Like in Kirp’s article saying, “intelligence isn't a static trait or the luck of the genetic draw, but can grow through hard work period,” I needed to see any work I did as growth for my brain (Kirp 472).
What I learned in the end is that failure can help me to go from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset by seeing it as challenges to overcome not as ends. Working with the failures is what I need to do to improve my mindset. I don’t need to see the failures as the end for any project or goal, I just need to keep going and have a good support system to help me out.
Works Citied
Dweck, Carol. “Even Geniuses Work Hard.” UA-PTC Composition Mix, edited by Erica Wnek,
Norton, 2020. pp. 474-480.
Kirp, David L. “Conquering the Freshman Fear of Failure” UA-PTC Composition Mix, edited by
Erica Wnek, Norton, 2020. pp. 471-473.
“Mindset Assessment.” What's My Mindset, 2015, blog.mindsetworks.com/what-is-my-
mindset.
Teller, Astro, “The Unexpected Benefits of Celebrating Failure” TED, Feb. 2016,
www.ted.com/talks/astro_teller_the_unexpected_benefit_of_celebrating_failure.
“You Can Grow Your Brain.” Composition I, Instructor Jennifer Atkins-Gordeeva, Fall 2020,
UA-PTC. Handout.
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