Week 8: Growth Mindset

Here is an Automotivator image I made for growth mindset this week. Without hard work, I find that things generally amount to nothing. 

Week 7: Growth Mindset

LEARN MORE ABOUT MINDSETS

A resource that I found on the growthmindsetmemes blog was: 

If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That way, their children don't have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence.

- Carol Dweck

Image taken from Growth Mindset memes blog.

I found that this is really important. When I was a kid growing up, I loved to hear praise from my parents and teachers. So much so that once I didn't get the praise that I wanted to hear, I ended up feeling unsure of myself and wanting to give up on what I was working on. Thinking back, I wish that I was taught to accept more challenges as a kid rather than having to learn on my own how to challenge myself. I feel like when I have my own children, I would like to instill this into them!

Week 6: Growth Mindset

LEARN FROM OTHERS

As I was scrolling through this week's growth mindset posts, this post caught my eye. I think what made it important was that this was someone's success story with the growth mindset. It goes to show that you don't know what you're capable of once you try it. In this student's case, she never spoke in French in her class, but she finally did and it turns out that she did a great job that her teacher was thoroughly impressed. I felt like this post definitely encourages me to exercise the growth mindset because I want something like this to happen to me too! I want to overcome my own inhibitions and gain something from it, just like this student! I don't really like to speak up in class, so I want to push myself to participate more in my class discussions with my professors in the future! 

My screenshot of the student's post.

Week 5: Growth Mindset

Growth Mindset Memes

Meme from GrowthMindsetMemes.

Here is a meme that really hit home for me. Most of the time, we don't do things out of fear of failure or rejection and that's okay because the human mind is hardwired to be scared of those things due  of the cultural aspects of our lives. But when we really think about it, this fear really is irrational, is it not? Failure is what teaches us new things, so why do we we fear it? We should all take that leap of faith and take action instead of running away from our problems. Maybe once we get started, we realized it wasn't so bad after all, and finally... maybe we will learn something new.

Week 4: Growth Mindset

For this week, I used AutoMotivator to make some growth mindset memes that I think convey very good messages.

"Not Yet" meme created by me using AutoMotivator.

 I chose this quote for this meme because I remember how Dweck showcased the importance of the words "not yet" because they don't impose a limit on you, they just explain why you can't do something in this very moment... but if you work at it, you can.

"Challenge Yourself" meme created by me using AutoMotivator.

I thought this quote was good and it went really well with the picture.

Week 3: Growth Mindset

For this week, I did the writing challenge! I didn't think about changing my writing style at all until I came across another student's blog while perusing the blog directory and I saw that he/she was using poetry. I thought that it would be impossible for me to do since I'm no poet, but I decided to give it a try! It turned out to be a better experience than I thought it would. It was a little difficult finding words that would rhyme and then piece them into the story all the while making the whole thing make sense, but I definitely feel proud of myself after finishing my story. It's not the best poetry since I feel like it doesn't flow very well, but I feel like I accomplished something just from trying it out. Maybe I can work on making my poetry flow in the future!

"It takes work to built a masterpiece" meme by Laura Gibbs. Source: Growth Mindset Memes Blog.

Week 2: Growth Mindset

Talking About Mindset

Earlier this week, the concept of "the self" came up in my social psychology class. There were four C's in the self-concept content and one of the C's was Changeability. Changeability is directly related to Dweck's research of "fixed" vs "growth" mindsets. My professor gave me some additional information regard these two different mindsets and this is what I learned.

Fixed mindsets: avoid challenges, give up easily, see effort as useless or bad, respond to criticism poorly, and feel threatened by others' success

Growth mindsets: embrace challenges, persists, sees effort as the path to mastery, learns from criticism, and inspired by others' success.

He even mentioned that he had a two sons and one obviously had a growth mindset while the other had a fixed mindset. By observing his sons, he found that the one thing that a fixed mindset person would say the most is "No. I don't like that." On the other hand, the growth mindset person would say "Let me try it. I might like it."

While I was pondering over this information, I asked my professor after class if it was possible to be both a fixed mindset and growth mindset individual at once, because that's what I thought I was. He told me that it is possible and to be both and that may be because I can compartmentalize different parts of me/my personality. For example, in academics, I could be a growth mindset, whereas in fashion, I could be a fixed mindset. I thought this would be interesting to share!

Growth Mindset

I have never heard of Carol Dweck before, but I have recently heard about the growth-fixed mindset. Before watching the videos, I only had a rudimentary idea of what it exactly was. This was because I learned of it after skimming through my biochemistry professor's syllabus this semester.

In other aspects of life, I would say that I have a growth mindset. I am very open to trying new things. It might take a me a while to build up the courage to try something new, but I always strive to overcome my obstacles and attaining new skills or experiences. In my schoolwork, however, I am not sure where I would put myself on that spectrum. When I am studying for a challenging course, I love it. I love it when I learn something new or when I am able to integrate my newly found knowledge into an everyday task; however, when it comes to the test-taking part, it's an entirely different story... Before I came to college, that is. When I was in the middle of a test that I was breezing through and I reached a portion the test where I had no idea what the answer was, I immediately panicked and kind of shut down (like oh no, I don't know this answer. That's it. I'm done for. Finito). Like Dweck mentioned in her TEDTalk about how the fixed mindset students' brains shut down, that's exactly what my brain did. But after four semester at OU, I have become able to adapt to those situations and rationally think through the problem when I get stuck. I feel that from kindergarten through high school, the emphasis is always focused on the grade rather than the amount learned, so I completely agree with Dweck's argument. There are many different ways to determine mastery of a subject rather than just a pencil and paper test and schools don't cater to that difference in learning style. That's why before I came to OU, I had a completely fixed mindset. But now, through my experiences thus far, I believe I have become less fixed. It's funny... in college, I learned how to learn.

I feel that I would like to learn more about the growth mindset because it can open new doors for people to excel in many aspects of life. I think I would like to try to talk about the growth mindset with my peers in the "Talking about Mindset" and see what their opinions are and what kind of mindsets they possess.

My personal goal for this semester is to do well in my classes (especially Intro to Biochemistry, because I have heard that class is a doozy)
and stay on top of everything. This year will be a little more difficult for me because I am taking up a part time job whilst studying and maintaining my positions in various extracurricular activities, which I've never done before. It worries me a bit that I won't have 100% of my time contributed for just studying, but I hope that I can find a way to make it work. Other people have, so I should be able to as well, right?

Courage doesn't mean you don't get afraid. Courage means you don't let fear stop you.

Meme by Laura Gibbs. Source: Growth Mindset Memes