Tag Archives: grit

Antecedent to: Forever or a Failure

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Yesterday I wrote:

It’s Not: Forever or a Failure

Starting something and doing it for a while, then changing your mind is often seen as a failure. When in fact, it’s very possible that continuing on and being unhappy would be far more of a failure. Yet from the outside, sticking with it looks more like success than the person who changes their mind, and is ready to challenge themselves in new, interesting, and exciting ways.

Today I share an antecedent to this:

Stick to it! Don’t quit too early. The forever analogy above, and trying something new instead, relates to things you’ve done for a long time and feel committed to. But new things deserve time, effort, and some fortitude in times of difficulty.

It’s easy to make excuses why the new path you are on, or the new hobby you are trying, is too hard or to decide the learning curve is too big. It’s easy to rationalize giving up too quickly. Any new and worthy task or routine takes some grit to stick with. When you’ve given the new thing a few months, or even a few years, that’s when the idea that it need not be ‘forever or a failure’ comes into play.

Before that, when things are still relatively new, there needs to be a time commitment. After time has permitted a long term cost-benefit analysis, only then is quitting not a failure, and continuing forever could be more detrimental and less rewarding than moving on.

Doing new things can be scary, and it can be easy to justify or rationalize or even irrationally reason that continuing on in an activity is too hard, or not worth the effort. Leave a new habit or practice or hobby too soon and a failure is a failure. Continuing on too long, or not quitting because you are scared to vary from your comfort zone can also be a failure.

It’s a delicate dance of time… don’t be afraid to put the time into something new, and really give it a chance… and don’t spend more time on something than is necessary just because these are the same dance steps you’ve been doing for a long time.

Favourite question

Inquiry Hub is a school where students need to be self directed. A good portion of a student’s day is determined by the student. On any give school day students can have 1-3 hours where they are deciding what they want to work on. There is always work to be done for courses. There’s always a student chosen inquiry to work on. There’s always a distraction that can pull them away from their work, since they have full access to their laptops and the internet, and access to any other personal device they bring to school.

It’s a subject of a future post, but I’d love to develop a K-12 Inquiry Hub with a vision where it’s a school for every kid. But we get students at grade 9, and if they come to us without self-directed skills, and distractions prevent them from independently working and getting things done during their school day, or if they don’t self advocate when they are stuck, then our school becomes a really challenging place. It becomes a place where a student is always overwhelmed, or catching up on work, and never doing their inquiry projects… which is precisely why they came to our school.

When we interview our applicants (an interview with students and parents), we have a series of questions we ask, which really help us uncover their learning habits, and if they will thrive in our school. One question that we ask near the end doesn’t always tell us a lot about this, but it’s my favourite question. “Tell me about a time when you really had to work hard to accomplish something.” I then elaborate, “You felt a great deal of accomplishment when you were done, but it wasn’t easy.” And, “It doesn’t have to be school related.”

This question is about grit. It digs into a personal story of perseverance. And students often share some really interesting stories. We often learn about an aspect of their lives that we would not have learned otherwise, like the student has their black belt in Karate, or they’ve done 8 years of dance. I also like asking it at the end of the interview, because it finishes the interview with students thinking about something that gave them a good sense of accomplishment.

Last night we did our last scheduled interview, and I’m looking forward to a freer evening schedule, but overall, I really enjoy the process we go through and we end up with some truly amazing kids in our school. Students who thrive and find their tribe.

Go Fish

Isn’t it funny how we can lack perseverance and grit with some challenges while with others our attitude is completely different?

We can learn a lot about this from fishing hobbyists. Anglers will go to a lake or river and cast for hours with no luck. They will try different lures and techniques, and they will move to different areas, but they won’t give up. And then, if hours later they are packing up, and they still haven’t caught anything, well then it was still a good day.

I’ve heard it said that ‘the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result’. But sometimes we just need to go fishing a little. Maybe some time, patience, and perspective is all we need… Along with the attitude that a little fishing expedition can be fun, even if the immediate results aren’t what we are looking for.