Growth Mindset: Graduate School

Graduate school's been on my mind a lot lately since the deadlines for applications are swiftly approaching. Although I'm apprehensive about being smart enough to do the work required in grad school, I think I've been learning in my social theory class that I am, in fact, fully able to handle the kind of critical thinking and work management to succeed in such a program.

When I started my social theory class I was really pretty pessimistic about whether or not I could keep up with the rest of the class and actually said so on the first day of class. I think that, even now, I may be a bit behind the learning curve when it comes to the work and critical analyses required in that class but over the last semester I've learned that most of what I'm afraid of is putting a large amount of effort into the class only to fail it. Sometimes, then, I don't try my best because if I don't do my best and fail then I can say that the only reason I failed was because I didn't try my hardest. Trying my hardest and failing is a much scarier thing to consider.

As the semester's gone on, I think I've come more to terms with being able to fail occasionally in class if it means learning from my mistakes. I'm trying to speak more in class in order to be corrected if need-be although such a thing still gives me anxiety. I've got a long way to go especially considering I'm not yet in grad school but I think I'm getting there.

(Marx's Capital, one of the difficult books we had to read for class)