6B Making Connections

For the past six weeks, each article we read for Inquiry was very beneficial to students like me who are new to how college works. The articles were rich with information that any first year student can take into consideration and apply to their first semester. I have taken many of the article’s tips and tricks to surviving college and applied it to many of my classes so far. Last week we were asked to read an article that discussed The Grit Scale which was developed by Angela Duckworth. She described grit as sticking to things over the a long term until you master them. This is an important concept that all college student should be familiar with. Duckworth goes more in detail how in order to have a lot of grit you must have stamina and passion. The scale that Duckworth used to determine a person’s grit was called the Grit Scale.  This scale that Duckworth developed is used in the Military to predict retention and attrition among those who are enlisting. A link on the website where the article was found allowed us to take the test and see first hand what our grit level was; my result matched almost perfectly to how I believe my work ethic in school is. I scored a 5 which meant that I was in the 90-99% of people who took the test who had high grit.

A couple weeks early we read many articles on motivation, which I believe relates to Duckworth’s concept of grit. Motivation can be broke up into two types; Extrinsic and Intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation refers to outside sources such as grades and rewards to motivate someone and Intrinsic motivation refers to motivation that is self inflicted. Both ways of being motivated can be useful depending on what kind of person you are. If you can self teach and motivate yourself you are capable of intrinsic motivation but if you need a reason to be motivated such as receiving a good grade or a reward, you are more extrinsic motivated. Each type has their benefits and defaults but varies on the person.

As I was reading the article about the grit scale and watched Duckworth discuss her ideas, I realized that in order to be gritty you need to be motivated. In a clip from Ted Talks where Duckworth talks about in detail about her scale she mentions that in order to achieve grit you must have stamina and passion. In other words I believe that grit also equals being fully motivated. Motivation is the force that drives a person to get through a tough homework assignment in order to hand it in on time. This person would be an extrinsic motivator along with being very gritty. Having grit and motivation would mean that student would be completely  motivated to make sure all their work is done on time and in the best quality they could develop. The student would be rewarded for handing their assignment on time and doing well on the assignment due to their high motivation and grit.

I find it very interesting when topics discussed in class relate back to another topic we previously discussed in class. I find that sometimes classes overlap and we begin talking about a topic that was taught in another class. It keeps my focus in class when I am able to connect two topics together and think about the similar and differences between the two. Mindset and Grit are two topics I have noticed so far that depend on each other in order to work to their full potential .