I learned about Growth Mindset from my professor for Business and Professional Communication, Dr. Ryan Bisel. At the start of the semester, he presented the idea of growth mindset in the hopes that students would take the information and use it to their advantage. He loves to see students grow and learn during the semester, calling it their “transformation”.
I believe in the growth mindset. I don’t think that people are born with a certain level of intelligence. If they set their mind to something and have the ability, they can achieve fantastic things. However, as my professor said, there are some things that people just will not be able to do simply from a lack of interest or from starting too late in life or not having the physical ability. Being in the Communication field, I’ve heard many people say they are not “math people” or they’re not “science people”, which is why they’re in Communications. My professor contradicted this by saying that they simply weren’t interested in becoming better at these fields so they never truly applied themselves. A six-foot, 200 lb. man wanting to be a jockey isn’t entirely possible, because he found that particular dream to late in life AND he has certain physical characteristics that might cause some problems in that dream.
However, I do believe that some people’s brains are just hardwired for certain things. Some people are somewhat born to be math geniuses or music prodigies. They find the field easy and quickly pick up new topics and ideas. Other people are not hardwired this way, but the can definitely train themselves and work at the field and become just as good. They may not pick things up as quickly, but they can master things to the same degree.
Meme created by Laura Gibbs. Source: Growth Mindset Memes
