During all my undergrad years and in high school, I was involved in tutoring and public service. At Harvard, I spent over 35 hours a week doing service. I was a Big Sister, I worked for the homeless, the elderly; it was the epicenter of my focus.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHI think the very idea of character, of developing not just grit, but empathy and curiosity, emotional intelligence.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it.
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I ended up doubling the math time that a conventional school would have. But I don’t think any of these things were path-breaking or unusual.
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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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Gritty people train at the edge of their comfort zone. They zero in on one narrow aspect of their performance and set a stretch goal to improve it.
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Drive is something that can be encouraged by a wonderful teacher, by a terrific classroom environment, by an awesome soccer team that you are on, and it can be squashed as well.
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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.
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Grit may carry risk because it’s about putting all your eggs in one basket, to some extent.
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I don’t think that every child in America is going to necessarily aspire to, you know, a four-year degree from a liberal arts college or a certain kind of life. I think that people should learn to be excellent in the thing that they choose to do.
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Psychologists call this the maturity principle. My own life experience fits this principle to a T.
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When people tell me I can’t do something, I have a visceral reflex to say, ‘Yes, I can.’
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If you are a young person who is wanting to develop a passion, you cannot expect anyone else to tell you what that passion would be.
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I think the questions on the grit scale about not letting setbacks disappoint you, finishing what you begin, doing things with focus, I think that those are things I would aspire to or hope for for all our children.
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I will say that if my wildest dreams come true, I will, like, wake up one day, and I will be Carol Dweck, right? Because she is like everything I want to be.
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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.
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I worked hard when I was a consultant. I worked hard when I was in graduate school looking at neuroscience.
ANGELA DUCKWORTH