What is YOUR Grit Score?
New graduate students have a lot in common with new preschoolers who are entering Montessori school: we are eager, we are intrigued by colorful opportunities presented in books to building blocks with which to explore the world, and we hope to find a friend somewhere in the classroom with whom to share our uncertainty.
I recall my early years of first-day pride as I begin my own new first day on campus September 4th as a grad student at USC, and pleased to announce that I’m just as snappily dressed as in years gone by when I wore black-and-white saddle shoes to school my first day. I stride across my new campus in my oxfords, noticing along the way that none of the other students have the same fashion taste in footwear. Trend setter, or outsider, it doesn’t matter since I’m reading a campus map as I go though I don’t see anyone else holding a map. Why does ‘starting out’ come with that gut feeing that you don’t know what everyone else does?
Having found the class, which I surely think should qualify for extra points and even more if I’d been on time, we are greeted by a professor in a tweed coat, a staple among university professors. Soon told why we are there: our goal as students is to solve a problem that no one else has solved. Each of us sitting in this class, on innovation and creativity, has at least one thing we want to change in the world. Our challenge, says our professor, is to think boldly, make the problem meaningful to us since we’ll be working on it for years, and make it important enough to conclude that the world will be better off with our discovery. So we are to begin (and this is the hardest part) by stating what this problem is and why it’s worthwhile, in one sentence. I look slowly over at the student next to me. He catches my glance and returns it with a hesitant grin and eyes wide with fear. I have not yet written a word for my first assignment but have just made my first friend.
What will it take to be here and resist the tempting thought to make a fast break of it and run away? Will it take brilliance beyond anything ever seen yet at the University? If so the admission committee has made a mistake. Will it take a flash of insight that will come naturally to me in the middle of the night? Science says this is not likely. How will I ever change the world and solve what is hidden from view that deserves attention? It will happen most likely because of one thing.
Grit.
The examiner who tested me for my first pilot’s license told me: “You’ve got gumption.” Too exhausted by hours of testing, I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing since I hadn’t heard the word ‘gumption’ for a long time. But he meant grit. To make a dream happen, it starts with an attitude. Brilliance won’t do it alone. Perfection is not necessary because ‘mistakes’ do not mean ‘quit.’ Where is it found, this gritty attitude?
It lives on the edge. Not in the middle.
The edge is a place found by going outside the everyday, status quo beliefs. It is accepting false starts, going back, and taking small steps forward. When finding the hidden answer to a problem, mistakes happen, just like when my plans blew away on my first solo flight. (Lesson learned: do the fight again and keep the air vents closed.) Unseen problems will be expected, says our professor, when looking for the hidden answers. Problems find other problems. Nothing will come easy. But that’s the point. The road will be smooth sometimes, we are told, but bumpy happens too, when living on the edge.
Do you have grit? Try the GRIT test by another professor and author of ‘Grit”, Dr. Angela Lee Duckworth:
http://angeladuckworth.com/grit-scale/
(You can change your score! It’s waiting for you in your attitude, which is hidden from view, but shows up in behavior you choose to live by.)
After my assignment has been reviewed and approved by my professor, I will share it with you. In the meantime, I must seek new trendy footwear. At the end of my first day of school, my oxfords hurt. I remember the new black-and-white saddle shoes doing the same. Some things don’t change.
