For the last few weeks, everyone in the class was granted the opportunity of a lifetime: To write a journal about our mindsets. We used an app called Book Creator to produce our journals. We learned about a few topics including grit, persistence, failure, and the Growth Mindset.
The growth mindset was by far the most important thing we had learned. Basically, there are 2 types of mindsets. Fixed, and Growth. People with a fixed mindset would say something like “I can’t do this, I’m bad at this, I give up” when facing a challenge. A person with a growth mindset would say something like “I can’t do this yet, how can I become better at this, I can keep working on this little by little.” At the beginning of the assignment, everyone was tasked with completing a short, growth mindset test. The scores were ordered from 1-5, 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. I got a 3.125, so a little bit above average. At the end of this micro-project I took the test again and I was glad to see my score had improved to 3.875. I know that I don’t have a perfect growth mindset, and I don’t think anyone does, but I have reason to believe that I have greatly improved my mindset.
For the final task, we had to create a long term academic goal. One thing I had been planning to do for a while was to read more. So I made my goal to read more, but I tweaked it so that it involved growth mindset. My goal is to read at least 4 motivational/inspirational/self development books by June. The 4 books I want to read are Think and Grow Rich, How to win friends and influence people, the 7 habits of highly effective people, Power, and Rich Dad Poor Dad. I chose these books because they all revolve around how to develop a mindset for success. I may do a book review once I have finished. After I finish the books, I can take the Growth Mindset test again to monitor my growth
