Week 8 Growth Mindset

I would say that one of the things on the list that I have experienced a lot of trouble with would be staying in my comfort zone versus being willing to try new things. I would definitely consider myself to be an introvert, so I tend to feel comfortable in less socially grand situations. Over time in college I've grown little by little whether it be with giving speeches, interviews, meetings, selling "my brand" to people, and meeting many new people on campus. I also feel like I am a very habit oriented person (a lot of people get this way), so I like to do certain things throughout the day when I study, eat, or workout and it's hard for me to get out of those routines. Not that having routines is a bad thing, but I should be open to trying new things even if those things interfere with my usual daily actions.

As I talked about in my first growth mindset post, I also had a tendency to focus on getting the grade in a class rather than learning the actual material and being able to apply it in an out of school scenario. With classes don't pertain to my major, I think it's easy for me to think, Oh, well let me just get an A and who cares if I remember the information. I won't need to use that later on. This class has really showed me how wrong that was. It could be easy for me to go through this class just trying to complete the assignments and then let everything go at the end of the semester. Thankfully, I have been introduced to so many different growth concepts and ideas in this class, I feel like I'm starting realize how I can grow and enjoy the information I'm being given as opposed to information that I look at in a negative manner. I don't want to go through school wishing it was over because then you are just spending your days trying to run out the clock. That isn't a life to live in my opinion. I am excited to see what else I can learn in this class because so far, I really have been exposed to stuff that will help me improve myself all around and in the long run.

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Growth Mindset: Writing Challenge Continued

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Last week, I wrote about my writing challenges I chose (lengthening my story and using more visual details). I left off talking about my story length. I had gotten it to almost 1000 words, but still felt like I needed to add more visual details. To complete the challenge I had to go back and take out some of the parts, which I felt were unnecessary and add back words that were useful. I also reworded some sentences and adjectives to make them more valuable. I actually had to look up more pictures to add in (which the readers can use to help them image the setting even better) and also just looked up pictures to visualize what I wanted from the setting. Even though I was writing the story, I still had to look at pictures, which really helped me put what I had in mind on paper (in the blog). Hopefully this challenge will carry over into my other stories without me having to focus on it too much, buuuuuut I doubt it will fix itself that quickly. Overtime I will get better as long as i keep writing the stories. I recommend this challenge to anyone who struggles with story length!

Growth Mindset: Writing Challenges

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I chose to try and grow my writing process this week. I decided to do two different challenges, so I'm not completely done with the first one, but I finished expanding my story. Next week I will update everyone about my experience when I finish the visual detail challenge. Expanding my stories is usually quite a challenge for me. Well, it is if I choose to do it correctly. It isn't hard to add filler words like "really" and unnecessary adjectives. I thought that adding visual details would help me expand my story closer to the 1000 word limit, so it seemed like the right idea to mix the two challenges together. I am sitting at about 950 words now, so when finishing the visual challenge I will have to choose words carefully, which will be good for me. I want to be better at writing concisely. Although I'm not great with doing so, the reading and writing I have been doing in this course has helped me a lot. The room for improvement was definitely great, but I notice each week I become slightly more confident in my ability. Whether that is false self confidence or not is a totally different story. Maybe I should write something about that haha. I'm excited to try out some new techniques to really see how much I can improve my writing. Wish me luck haha!

Growth Mindset: Thinking is Part of Doing

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I chose to write about the meme, "Thinking is part of doing." While searching through the growth mindset memes, I finally found this one and it really stuck out to me. To me, it reminds me that before we do something, we should think of the consequences involved with the action. Not that every action will have bad consequences, but for those that do, you don't want to rush into anything without thinking it through. I thought the cat meme was funny too because, at least with my cats, they seem to creep up before they do something mischievous. Especially one of my cats. He sits there thinking about what he is going to do, then does it, and I'm pretty sure he knows he is doing something wrong!

Growth Mindset: Conversation

(I am Tiger Woods  --  Marc Levin)
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This week for the Growth Mindset challenge, I decided to talk to my roommate about the concept of having a growth mindset. At first, when I asked if he had heard of it, he looked completely caught off guard. He figured I was just making something up, but then I explained it to him. We started to talk about the reality of people growing up in today's society. He believes that a lot of kids, including some of us really do look for instant results. He admitted that as a golfer, he looks for improvement seemingly overnight when trying to get better. Although he knows that isn't how it works, he said that is just how he views some things from how he grew up. Hopefully talking about this with him will help his patience with golf. If he can realize he has potential to improve his golf game overtime, he won't be frustrated with lack of results right away.

The Reality of the Growth Mindset

Before reading the video transcripts of Carol Dweck, I hadn't ever heard of the term "Growth Mindset" or even of Carol herself. After reading about this topic, it made me realize how today's generation is being prepared for instant results and gratification. People search for instant validation to their work to make sure they are doing the right things.

(BRAINS!  --  Steve)
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One of the best examples I can think of would be with working out/dieting. Many individuals trying to get into better shape are always on the lookout for shortcuts to working out and to the overall results they want to achieve. The hard truth is that it doesn't come easily or quickly. The people who are able to take this Growth Mindset perspective will be better prepared for the long run results because they realize their potential to improve. As Dweck said in her "Make Challenge the New Comfort Zone" video, "I want "challenge" to be the new comfort zone, not "easy" being the comfort zone." Working out can be very challenging, so the people who can only handle easy (comfortable) situations may not achieve the results they set out to reach.

One of my biggest faults when it comes to this topic would be aiming to get certain grades in my classes. I focus solely on what I need to do to get the grades most of the time, rather than truly trying to learn the material and letting the grades come after that. Hopefully, learning more about Growth Mindset will help me realize my potential for the future as opposed to what I can get tomorrow. Overall, that mindset could help me utilize my time better and could even aid me in correcting my problems with time management discussed in my last post.