There are so many things that kids care about, where they excel, where they try hard, where they learn important life lessons, that are not picked up by test scores.
There’s something about taking the path of least resistance that makes a lot of sense. But at the same time, we have to figure out which things in life are worth struggling through.
I believe kids should choose what they want to do, because it’s their life, but they have to choose something, and they can’t quit in the middle unless there’s a really good reason.
Longitudinal studies following thousands of people across time have shown that most people only begin to gravitate toward certain vocational interests, and away from others, around middle school.
It’s also stamina in your direction, stamina in your interests. If you are working on different things but all of them very hard, you’re not really going to get anywhere. You’ll never become an expert.
And I’ve discovered a strikingly consistent pattern: grit and age go hand in hand. Sixty-somethings tend to be grittier, on average, than fifty-somethings, who are in turn grittier than forty-somethings, and so on.
If the quality and quantity of continuous effort toward goals matters as much as I think it does, we may actually get more productive, not less, as we get older – even if we can’t pull all-nighters like we used to.
People’s lives really do turn out differently. And it certainly can’t be explained by how intelligent you remember them being when they were sitting next to you in organic chemistry class.
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