Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck

I have never heard of Carol Dweck and the growth mindset until now but now that I have, I do see myself as a person who does let my grades bring me down but I do not dwell on it too much because I know I tried my best. As a first-generation student, I personally believe there is room for improvement and that grades do not always define how well you can do something. I remember last semester during one of my finals, our professor left us to go get more exams because half of our class had one while the other half did not. He told us not to cheat. I knew I had a choice, and I did not cheat because I would rather fail than cheat. Of course I did not fail but I also did not get the great I wanted despite studying a lot, but I passed the class with the grade I wanted and that's all that mattered to me.

While I have been at OU, I have learned that I learn better by doing and seeing than I do by listening, in other words, I am a visual learner and hands-on learner. My biggest challenge about learning new things is the time constraint. I like to tend to learn AFTER I have taken a course. When I look back at some of my courses, I know I could have done better now then I did back then because I have gotten wiser and learned different study methods to help me understand what I did not know before.

I do not know if I will really be interested in learning more about the growth mindset this semester but I will be willing to try because I like a good challenge. The whole time I've been at OU I have always complained about how my professors would give us easy examples and then harder ones for our homework. It never made sense to me but at the same time I enjoyed it, especially math, because it was like trying to solve a puzzle. Once the puzzle is solved, I feel accomplished and have also overcome a challenge and learned something new from it.

My personal learning goals for this semester is to try to take my time and figure out the problem and its purpose rather than just trying to get the work done. I also want to make sure to look over my work a few times before turning it in just for points. I'm excited about this semester because I will mostly be taking courses related to my major. I am excited about taking this new Web Design class because I am familiar with web design and enjoy coding a lot. One of the challenges I will face is learning to get used to new forms of codes since I got used to the one I learned last semester. Towards the end he had introduced us to a new coding language which I was originally excited about but ended up not liking because it wasn't something I am used to. For the most part I am not too worried about my classes but am more excited because I will be learning something new and I know it's going to help me in the future.

(Created by: John Hain)
Image Source: Pixabay