Some people prefer a world where we’re all equally talented in everything. Whether you prefer that world or not, I don’t think that world exists.
ANGELA DUCKWORTHMost teachers, when surveyed, say that it is part of their job to help students develop things like grit. This is especially true at the elementary and middle school levels. They feel it’s part of their vocation to teach other things that are not formally academic content.
More Angela Duckworth Quotes
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I worked hard when I was a consultant. I worked hard when I was in graduate school looking at neuroscience.
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Nobody gets to be good at something without effort, no matter what your aptitude is.
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Childhood is generally far too early to know what we want to be when we grow up.
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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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The words that we use I think are symbolic of the values that we hold.
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I think the very idea of character, of developing not just grit, but empathy and curiosity, emotional intelligence.
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You know, the things that I want my own daughters to develop – the idea that we’re going to get there through rewards and punishments seems completely at odds with the idea of character itself.
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You cannot will yourself to be interested in something you’re not interested in. But you can actively discover and deepen your interest.
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Many, many individuals will report starting to form their lifelong interests around adolescence. Why that is, researchers don’t fully know. But if you can take a trip down memory lane and see what interested you, that’s at least a clue as to where your interest may begin to develop.
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Substituting nuance for novelty is what experts do, and that is why they are never bored.
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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.
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Boredom is a very self-conscious emotion by definition. Interest is not. So you can actually be completely absorbed in something and, at certain points in your development, not even realize that you’re into it.
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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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I do think that whatever ambition I may have had natively was amplified by my father’s clear valuing of it. I knew that was what my dad really cared about.
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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.
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