Do you have grit? Is grit really a good thing?

[Grand Admiral Crunch]

Why Some Students Fail And Other Students Succeed - Illumeably

Why Some Students Fail And Other Students Succeed

What separates students who get straight A’s from students who struggle to pass their classes? Is it a high IQ that pushes students to excel in their classes or is there something else? Angela Lee Duckworth, a teacher turned psychologist, has an answer to that question. After several studies conducted in the military, spelling bees, classrooms, and companies, Angela determined what causes people to excel. Simply put Duckworth says, IQ was not the only difference between my best and my worst students.

In fact, she often saw cases in which students with higher IQ scores performed worse than students with lower IQ scores. So now we are back to our initial question–what separates students who get straight A’s from students who struggle to pass their classes?

Angela says grit is the separating factor. She defines grit as “passion and perseverance for very long-term goals”. Contrary to popular belief, grit has a more significant correlation to high school graduation rates than things like family income and social status do. So now you know you do not need to be some inherently intelligent individual to succeed in life, but how do you form grit?

Unfortunately, the answer is not easy and science does not have enough studies showing what actually builds grit, but on the bright side, we do not need to be talented individuals. Angela has observed cases where high talent could be inversely related to grit–in other words, the more talent one possesses, the less grit they may posses.

Additionally, Angela offers some hope from a study called “growth mindset” performed by Stanford’s Dr. Carol Dweck. Angela says the concept of growth mindset is, “the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed and it can change with your effort.” This means that if you failed to show grit in the past, you still have time to develop it.

 

[Population: 1]

Bah. Public school is twelve years of parroting. They apparently don't expect a student to think until college. Which leaves Mr Football Hero and Miss Pom Pom Queen all sorts of confused.

I should have put my sugar in my bowl of Grumpy O's this morning.

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

The downside to grit is plowing straight ahead through mountains and trenches, straight through rivers with the steely bulldozer of sheer will.
One can also be a river that finds the path of least resistance with a similar insistence that maximizes outcome for minimal effort,

 

[Ghost]

I always figured it was a good work ethic, which I lack.

ETA: Goddamn you, autocorrect.

 

[Typh0n]

I always figured it was a good work ethnic, which I lack.

I think work ethic is often (though I would guess not always) related to the motivation to acheive long term goals described in the OP article.

 

[Atomic Fiend]

Indeed. The answer was simple and in front of everyone noses. The public school system needn't not worry anymore about engaging children, and parents not worry about supporting them. It's all on the kid, if they have grit, they'll overcome all barriers, including: bullying, undiagnosed mental disorders, abuses of physical, emotional and sexual, stress from divorcing parents, apathy brought on by neglect, scapegoating teachers.

Education; Yes, it's that easy!

 

[Lark]

IDK

I used to think of grit as physical and mental toughness or endurance, which was kind of like a lot of books and media has referred to as resilience, for a long time I thought these were good things, I guess I'm not entirely dissuaded of that point even now, at least not altogether but I'm a lot more skeptical these days.

A lot of it appears to be people encouraging others to tolerate or develop coping strategies for dealing with pretty horrendous stuff which they themselves are not that interested in dealing with, I can think of a couple of old war comics that (in what was admittedly an atrociously simplified and one dimensional way, comics were just for kids back then and kids were meant to be stupid) dealt with the topic well, the top brass breezing in and out kind of thing.

I've not seen much talk of grit, resilient or what the current tagline actually is that wants to spend much time, or any time at all when I think about it, on the natural limits of those ideas, about what does happen when those limits are met or the trait or talent is over taxed. Also that, honestly, I dont think that it actually matters a damn, other factors could out weigh it a lot, do out weigh it a lot, dynamics, politics, context etc. etc.

Most of the people who actually possess grit are not going to get much credit for it, that's the kid whose parenting their siblings, getting bullied and their parents are abscent or hopeless, one of the on screen versions of this that I like was white bone, the hunger games actress' break through movie, and instead some white collar exec. who attends a few seminars and makes the "hard choice" to fire a host of people in some division or facility they've never seen or are likely to gets the credit instead.

I'm reading a book at the minute, it was written in the thirties, it was called "in praise of idleness", I was skeptical about it too given the title although he's talking about what would be called "time poverty" these days, anyway, Russell says that management and people selling their ideas to managers expand over time and I'd say he's right. This sounds like more of that.

 

[Lucy_Ricardo]

I think the idea of trying to quantify grit is hilarious, and I'm 100% behind it.

And I can see how grit is a major factor in long term success. Winston Churchill summed it up perfectly when he said, "Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm."

I've always been someone to get back in the saddle when I'm kicked off, and it has finally paid off after years of getting a bruised rump. It might be shameless optimism, but I prefer to call it grit.

 

[rav3n]

Look to the FFM. It's likely the same or related to the Conscientiousness factor.

 

[burningranger]

People with higher IQ see how pointless education really is, hence suck at it. The sheep who can muster the grit to keep on going, don't question the silly reasons they even have for wanting their education cause they got society's carrot dangling in front of them. There I solved the mystery for ya. I mean who is born saying "i want to study and get a degree so I can get societal approval so i can feel kinda good about myself...if only for a little while, as I wait for my inevitable mid-life crisis" ?

 

[anticlimatic]

Bah. Public school is twelve years of parroting. They apparently don't expect a student to think until college. Which leaves Mr Football Hero and Miss Pom Pom Queen all sorts of confused. I should have put my sugar in my bowl of Grumpy O's this morning.

They don't expect you to think in college either.

 

[Typh0n]

People with higher IQ see how pointless education really is, hence suck at it. The sheep who can muster the grit to keep on going, don't question the silly reasons they even have for wanting their education cause they got society's carrot dangling in front of them. There I solved the mystery for ya. I mean who is born saying "i want to study and get a degree so I can get societal approval so i can feel kinda good about myself...if only for a little while, as I wait for my inevitable mid-life crisis" ?

I think this is pretty cliché. I mean, yeah there is some of that rat race stuff invlolved with getting a degree, but it doesn't have to be that way. On the other hand, I wish you luck trying to do something - anything interesting in our society - without any kind of know-how.

I think alot of people, especially many young people who feel like something is being imposed on them, refuse to go to college and take any kind of goal-oriented thinking seriously because they see it as a rat race thing. Go to college, get a job in an office, don't question anyting get into a monogamous relationship, have three kids, watch them do the same thing you did, then retire and die. I think that's how it is for some people, but not everyone who has goals or who goes to college wants to be this way, or ends up this way.

I used to be very anti-college, because I wanted to blaze my own path in life, but all I did was collect dust in my corner. By cutting yourself off from society, you cut yourself off from every possibility of influencing it. You cut yourself off from...life.

Not everyone necessarily has to go to college, but there is a need to learn a trade. Apprenticeships are good too.

 

[Typh0n]

They don't expect you to think in college either.

In my experience, some of the teachers expect you to think, though alot don't/don't care.

 

[Bush]

The sheep who can muster the grit to keep on going, don't question the silly reasons they even have for wanting their education cause they got society's carrot dangling in front of them.

Silly reasons like being able to form a career path and lead a comfortable life, with at least all of their lower needs met so they can concentrate on higher-order needs such as self-actualization, peace, happiness, and fulfillment?

What's the alternative? Being too bad at school and too lazy to apply grit to find ways to make even a basic living?

 

[ceecee]

People with higher IQ see how pointless education really is, hence suck at it. The sheep who can muster the grit to keep on going, don't question the silly reasons they even have for wanting their education cause they got society's carrot dangling in front of them. There I solved the mystery for ya. I mean who is born saying "i want to study and get a degree so I can get societal approval so i can feel kinda good about myself...if only for a little while, as I wait for my inevitable mid-life crisis" ?

Sounds like someone trying to justify how they're still installing Direct TV at 55.

 

[burningranger]

Silly reasons like being able to form a career path and lead a comfortable life, with at least all of their lower needs met so they can concentrate on higher-order needs such as self-actualization, peace, happiness, and fulfillment?

What's the alternative? Being too bad at school and too lazy to apply grit to find ways to make even a basic living?

I was being slightly tongue in cheek with my previous post. But for the most part the point still stands. I think IQ is a load of crap....but if ANYONE considers themselves
intelligent then they must have some sort of big-picture view of their lives where a higher education might or might not fit in according to their own needs and desires.

The alternative to not going to college you mean? The world is full of examples. I'm not saying you can't have grit without going to college. I'm saying grit is better
used when applied to your OWN true desires....and not some default approach some fucker in the industrial age thought was a good idea. You only NEED grit when you are doing something you don't love. The fact that most of us ASSUME you are not supposed to love your education is a bad sign of the times indeed.

And a career path (which already assumes a lot of things...like you are mostly focused on only one thing for aloong time etc) is not something I would associate necesssarilyl with the freedom to be able to focus on self-actualization or peace or fullfilment AT ALL. In fact I say for all those things it's usually a hindrance.



Typh0n : know-how and higher education are NOT correlated. This is the extent of our brainswashing in this society, where we are so disenpowered even as kids, that we
forget the most direct path to knowing how to do it IS NOT to get a fucking degree for it. So are we assuming here that people without higher education are what? Bums, incapable of engaging themselves in life without a fucking paper saying they are worth anything?

I'm not pissed at anyone or anything...but I was posting just to see if I would trigger someone... And I have too much passion for this particular subject to keep on discussing it, because I can already tell most people here are not going to understand where I'm coming from. Now....for SOVEREIGN people I think education can be grand. Awesome. But for all intents and purposes the way we have conceptualized it and used it in our society up until now...I would go so far as calling it a fucking crime on us as individuals. It's not based on growth...it's based on comptetions...it's not based on self-awarenss it's based on not questioning.....it CRIPPLES our children. It cripples our mindset for the most part....so much so that people don't dare to objectively question it from the ground up. I've learned that there are waayyy too many belief systems in the way (and egos too...for if I dedicated myself to education or depend on it...how can I be unbiased about it?) that most people haven't even questioned in THEIR OWN LIVES...for most people to even be able to discuss it openly in society.

This is not some anti-rat race tirade on my part. This is about me being anti anything that deals with humans lives that is defended in the name of tradition and not questioned from the ground up to see if it REALLY has value in most cases. And the people who I would be debating (I'm not talking about any of you forum members specifically here btw;just in general) this with probably have very myopic world views in otther areas of life and this is not somethign that can be analyzed in isolation from your big picture view on life.


TLDR : education as we know it is a hoax. No one is interested in enpowering you to become more of yourself or in dealing with life better. We are very retarded as a society still...we don't even know how to handle our emotions or why we have them. We haven't even figured out the root causes for happiness or understood our nature. We still think we are sacks of meat running around a floating ball. If anyone was intersted in enpowering kids and for them so self-actualized they would question the century old models on which everything is predicated. It's not natural to condition our lives at such an young age with a decision that is strongly influenced by external expectation. We tie education too much with our kids self-worth to be able to view it objectively. We don't do this if we thiink of going to a painting class at 60. BURN THEM ALL!!!! The teachers, the students, the clueless politicis behind these ideas but most of all your stupid beliefs around what education should be.

 

[anticlimatic]

Sounds like someone trying to justify how they're still installing Direct TV at 55.

Still a more rewarding job than anything involving a phone and a cubicle.

 

[Qlip]

I have 'lube', I'm not a big fan of friction, and it's surprising how many things you can slip past.

 

[Smilephantomhive]

I think this is pretty cliché. I mean, yeah there is some of that rat race stuff invlolved with getting a degree, but it doesn't have to be that way. On the other hand, I wish you luck trying to do something - anything interesting in our society - without any kind of know-how.

I think alot of people, especially many young people who feel like something is being imposed on them, refuse to go to college and take any kind of goal-oriented thinking seriously because they see it as a rat race thing. Go to college, get a job in an office, don't question anyting get into a monogamous relationship, have three kids, watch them do the same thing you did, then retire and die. I think that's how it is for some people, but not everyone who has goals or who goes to college wants to be this way, or ends up this way.

I used to be very anti-college, because I wanted to blaze my own path in life, but all I did was collect dust in my corner. By cutting yourself off from society, you cut yourself off from every possibility of influencing it. You cut yourself off from...life.

Not everyone necessarily has to go to college, but there is a need to learn a trade. Apprenticeships are good too.

Degrees are for the connections. You can learn if you put the work into it, but you have to be the one to teach yourself really.

 

[StonedPhilosopher]

My Engineering teacher last year (I'm in high school (rising Senior) btw) showed us this very video two or three months ago.

I was in the lowest-level History and English classes Freshman through Junior year due to not attempting to do homework, etc. This year, however, I actually decided to ace the classes, and did so with minimal effort while everyone else was struggling. One example: we were supposed to be preparing for the History final for the last two-three days of regular classes. This involved studying in general as well as making an outline for an essay question in which we had to construct an argument using examples from two different units. I just fucked around, glanced at some old notes the day before, and constructed my entire essay on the spot using around five sentences the teacher said off-hand during two different units as the examples without even bothering to look up whether I remembered it correctly. I got ~94% multiple-choice and 48/50 points on the essay, earning me 95% overall and an A for the year. Meanwhile, other kids were lamenting their Cs, and when I waved my score around around they said something along the lines of "damn, I should've studied harder."

TL;DR: Got a way better grade on a test/essay with way less studying.