In rare instances during school, we can actually learn something that may benefit our young existences outside the classroom. In between parabola's, mitochondria's, and old philosophers preaching about fairly pretentious theorems, there are golden nuggets of information that can apply directly to your life and help you solve a problem with ease. Recently, in a psychology class, I stumbled upon one of these golden nuggets of information when I learned about something called a "growth mindset."
To explain a growth mindset, one may first want to know about the opposite: a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset means that you believe your capabilities and talents are fixed traits. For example, you may believe that if you get good grades, it is simply because you are good at that subject. Likewise, if you fail a test, it is because you are bad at that subject. Thus, you may avoid more difficult tasks or subjects in life to avoid having your "fixed" abilities called into question.
On the contrary, having a growth mindset means that you are capable of attributing failures and successes to effort, rather than ability. It means that you do not believe that you are good or bad at certain tasks, but believe that you may have to put more effort into certain things in order to achieve the results you wish. In addition, you are more likely to seek out challenges and keep trying to achieve this until you see success. A beautiful thing about growth mindset is that you can adopt it whenever you'd like, as long as you consciously put effort into utilizing it.
Immediately prior to learning this, I had really bombed an exam (I'm talking, like, nuclear bombed it). Coming out of this test, I felt entirely demotivated and told myself I was just bad at that subject and didn't belong in that class. However, after learning about growth mindsets, I am now attempting a different angle on this test: it happened, I learned my lesson (for the 5000th time) about watching YouTube while "studying," and it's time to comeback and ace the next exam (okay, realistically speaking, B+ the next exam). After all, as author (and also owner of a popular quote account on VSCO, which may or may not be how I found him) Rodolfo Hernandez said, "Feeling defeated is not the end, but the start of a great comeback."
So whatever it is in life that you feel like you're totally failing at, whether it be a class, a relationship, an internship, or any other task you feel kicking your ass, try using a growth mindset about it. You are not defeated, you just simply have not achieved your goals yet. But if you continue trying your hardest and refuse to accept failure as an option, you sure will. Go pick yourself up off the ground, wipe off the dust and start your epic comeback. The world is waiting.
P.S. If that comeback has to do with a genetics class giving you migraines, illnesses, and an overall (and probably very unhealthy) sense of panic... we're in this together.
