What is Grit, as Duckworth seems to see it? Use at least 2 passages to help you define it.

As Duckworth sees it, grit can be defined as the determination to persevere and keep trying until you succeed. She defines it as having the will to see your goals through, even when you feel like quitting. It is a perspective on life, “where Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint”. This is a really good analogy for incorporating aspects of the concept of grit into your life. When people only live for today or tomorrow, they don’t end up setting goals for the future, and as a result, are unable to make any huge life changes. “We need to measure whether we’ve been successful, and we have to be willing to fail, to be wrong, to start over again with lessons learned.” Having grit means being willing to fail, but get up anyways and try again.

When have YOU exhibited Grit? When have you NOT exhibited Grit? (These are “text to self” connections!)

A time that I exhibited grit was when I was taking AP Art in high school and starting out, my projects didn’t really have a lot of depth or deeper themes that connected them. So I kept improving on and changing my projects until that theme became clear to me and I could follow a better path to where I wanted to go with my art. It also took me a lot of time to figure out what that path was, since my first projects were kind of vague due to the fact that I wasn’t really even sure what theme wanted to portray through my art. A time when I did not exhibit grit was right after I graduated high school, I was determined to keep up my fluency in French after taking it for about six years. But I haven’t really done all that much to keep this skill, but I still have time to build it up and keep it, since it hasn’t been too long.

Duckworth tells us she doesn’t know how to cultivate Grit. OK. Based on what you find in her talk, in what we’ve read this term, and in your own experiences, how do YOU THINK we might cultivate Grit? Explain with reference to the text, the world, and/or yourself.

I think that based on this, grit could be cultivated by people encouraging students and others to fail. Instill in them that failure is an important step in the learning process, contrary to what many American school systems have taught children. These schools teach students that failure is not an option, but in fact, it can be one of the best outcomes in the long run, because you will walk away from that experience with much more knowledge than what you had before. American schools also seem to teach kids that failing means that you are a failure just in general, when in fact, grit is teaching people that “they’re much more likely to persevere when they fail, because they don’t believe that failure is a permanent condition.”

We soon move to our next important project – Majors Exploration. Take some time to think about which major (or majors) seem interesting to you. Nobody is asking you to choose a major right now! Instead, try to identify one major or several. Write at least 3 sentences explaining why you think each possible major interests you. Is it careers? The questions they might ask? The kinds of work they might involve on in? Something else?

I think that I want to explore the business sustainability major because I have always thought that it would be cool to have a business of my own one day. I like the flexibility that it gives you in that you can make a business in practically anything as long as you are knowledgeable about it and are passionate. Also, I enjoy the aspect of creativity that being able to run your own business can form.