Childhood is generally far too early to know what we want to be when we grow up.
ANGELA DUCKWORTH
One of the challenges of commencement speeches is that you have this older, wiser person who is accomplished talking to young, not-yet-so-wise, not-yet-accomplished adults or, in high school or middle school, even younger.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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Every day, parents and teachers ask me, ‘How do I build grit in kids? What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic? How do I keep them motivated for the long run?’ The honest answer is, I don’t know.
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When people think of the word ‘drive,’ they often think you have it or you don’t, and that’s where we’re wrong.
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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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Nobody gets to be good at something without effort, no matter what your aptitude is.
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Everybody knows that effort matters. What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.
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I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my genes because I can’t do anything about them.
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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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Grittier students are more likely to earn their diplomas; grittier teachers are more effective in the classroom.
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There is a fluency and an ease with which true mastery and expertise always expresses itself, whether it be in writing, whether it be in a mathematical proof, whether it be in a dance that you see on stage, really in every domain. But I think the question is, you know, where does that fluency and mastery come from?
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Is it ‘a drag’ that passions don’t come to us all at once, as epiphanies, without the need to actively develop them?
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What we reliably find is that people’s perseverance scores are actually higher than their passion scores, and I think it really does get to the fact that working hard is hard, but maybe finding your passion is even more difficult.
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The most important thing parents can do, although it’s not the only thing they should do, is model the behavior they want from their kids.
ANGELA DUCKWORTH