For me it is hard to identify one challenge that I’ve faced in school, because the whole journey has felt like one huge challenge for me. One overlapping challenge that I’ve faced is self-doubt. For most of my education I have doubted my abilities to learn or to understand subjects. I often blamed the teacher, or the school system, but I never identified my own shortfalls. This was a struggle of a bad mindset, and with learning something mindset is everything, if you don’t believe you can learn something you won’t.
It wasn’t until I learned about the concept of a growth mindset that the way I looked at school really changed. I started to see the challenges and struggles I faced as necessary steps in learning, instead of me being inadequate. I redefined how I approached learning difficult subjects by recognizing that I wouldn’t understand right away, but piece by piece I would be able to grasp it. In the process I realized that I wasn’t such a bad student I just had a bad mindset. I started to enjoy the challenge of not understanding something.
Balthazar,
I like your learning about the growth mindset. What you write here is good, but it lacks specifics. Is there something more to this memory. What was the challenge you were facing at the time? What was the BIG challenge that seemed unsurmountable here? Something that required you to keep trying and trying
Look at the writing prompt in the ANNOUNCEMENTS again. For this writing task, focus on one aspect or one event that has been a challenge. Is there an event/episode in your educational journey that made you feel that you were doubting your self? Can you specify one event or hard challenge that made you “doubt [your] abilities to learn or to understand [a specific class or] subject.” See how my example is about dropping out of med school. What big event for you represents a time when faced with a hardship that required you to be resilient, to keep working at something that seems huge? BE SPECIFIC.
Could it be something about moving to NYC and starting a new life and new college path? Is this a hardship/challenge that has required resilience? Look back at the writing prompt where I suggest some ideas to the whole class. I added some ideas to help student on this writing task. It’s in the Announcements description for HW 5 and it’s in pink.
ALSO — if nothing comes to mind that fits the writing prompt, consider the Mentor Quote option. It’s also a choice for HW 5.
The better your writing (focusing on an event that you can later develop into a full story) is here in these next HWs, the easier it will be to write the big assignment coming up! IN these next HWs, you are lookng for the seed of a good story.
If you have time, I’d like you to revise this HW. If you do revise — Just put (updated) in parenthesis next to your name in the title….so Writing Task Mentor Quote or Resilience — Balthazar (updated), so I’ll know and go back and look again.