Harvard, Yale, Princeton University— the list of ivy league schools goes on. Being able to attend one of these prestigious universities would be the common student ideal. For some, it poses a challenge that encourages the motivated student to work towards. And for others, it is a seemingly unattainable task not worth investing effort into. The cause of either circumstance is rooted in success— specifically how much of it a student can generate. Although it is the standard to coincide a student’s ability to earn A’s and near-perfect scores with achieving success, grit is an unfamiliar notion that can reform the individual’s out of date definition of success through a growth mindset.

Dr. Angela Duckworth, the psychologist behind grit, defines it as the passion and perseverance essential to accomplishing long term goals and achieving success in life. Knowing this, we are faced with the question— why aren’t very many students gritty? When faced with a challenge or difficult task, students feel pressured to either exceed expectations or face the risk of failure, depleting their motivation and increasing stress levels towards it. A study reports that “nearly half (49%) of all students reported feeling a great deal of stress on a daily basis and 31 percent reported feeling somewhat stressed,” (NYU). With these percentages combined, it totals to 80% of students that reportedly feel stress to some degree. Kim Gulbrandson, a writer for Committee for Children, states that “negative emotions may result in someone giving up more easily, so helping students to manage negative emotions when they encounter barriers to their goals could help provide a pathway for grit,” adding that “those with more grit may be less prone to negative emotions, or more effectively able to manage them.” Identifying stress in school environments links to a disinterest in student learning. In the words of Renninger and Hidi, “Interest is a powerful motivational process that energizes learning and guides academic and career trajectories.” Without this in place, students place themselves in a fixed mindset, restricting their potential before utilizing problem-solving strategies. 

While students are accustomed to having fixed mindsets that limit their capabilities, transforming this towards having a growth mindset enables them to attach “yet” to every “I can’t” they put out. Many tend to stick with the thoughts that they are “bad at math” or “weak in English,” leading to believe that their shortcomings are fixed and unchangeable. It is with a fixed mindset that students are more susceptible to giving up before even attempting to tackle the adversity before them. “With a fixed mindset, children believe that their abilities are immutable, so there is nothing that the child can change,” (Young Mathematicians). These are the students who are raised in the fear of taking academic risks to avoid failure and the trepidation of never recovering from it. Dr. Carol Dweck, known as the originator of growth mindset, states in an interview with Harvard Business Review “that even basic talents and abilities can be developed over time through experience, mentorship, and so on. And these are the people who go for it.” Just changing one’s mindset to acknowledge that growth is possible allows them to envision any task as doable and believe in their ability to learn from experiences and failure. Additionally, students with a growth mindset are more accepting of challenges and tend to persevere while simultaneously building up their grit in order to succeed. It is in this case that it is important to praise the process of growth rather than the intelligence of students to send a positive growth mindset message. 

Identifying the cause for lack of grit and its importance in developing a growth mindset now poses the question, how does one foster grit to become successful? Doctors Paul Gratton and Brad Faircloth affirm that “studies of college students have shown that students with higher grit scores tend to have higher GPAs and change majors less often than those with lower grit scores.” The level of success one may achieve can be determined by how passionate they are towards achieving it and how motivated they are in doing so. This goes to show that the grittier the student, the more that they can achieve. It is during this process that it is important to encourage the production of authentic work, resulting in improved quality when students place value onto it. A Director of Personalized Learning, Andrew Miller says “students are more likely to improve their work when they know there is an authentic audience for the authentic work.” Students are more passionate about works that they find authentic value in putting effort into. A part of the process is inevitably failure— an essential factor that students should be encouraged to learn from. “Grit requires that there are multiple stages in the learning process and that the journey of learning is valued,” (Andrew Miller). Punishing students in the learning process discourages them from engaging with it, however, when students persevere it is key to celebrate the success and reflect on the challenging process it took to attain it. 

Knowing the key elements that make up a successful student revolutionizes ideals that were once fixated on achievements measured solely by letter grades and numbers. Utilizing the grit of a student activates the growth mindset within them that then allows them to passionately pursue growth from shortcomings in the long run. The immense impact of this reformation enables students to experience a more enriching education while encouraging them to strive for goals and build perseverance. When an individual is faced with adversity, take into consideration why one student may succeed in overcoming this challenge and why another would fail in doing so. The importance of grit is then easily identifiable in transforming the universal definition of students’ success.