Cypress College Deliberate Practice and Growth Mindset Discussion

The video about Angela Duckworth’s concept of “deliberate practice” was fantastic. The video discusses grit. She defines grit as stamina to passion and perseverance. You work hard and never give up to achieve your goal, and it has nothing to do with talent or intelligence. She claims that if you work hard, you will succeed. For example, I would use grit in my college studies by working hard and concentrating to achieve good grades. I have always wanted to be a dentist since I was a kid. I am still determined and working hard to become a dentist. I work hard because I believe that hard work yields good results. Currently, I study hard for my classes, I shadow a dentist, and read articles about new inventions every day.

Carol Dweck’s “growth mindset” has changed my way of thinking and how I will now go forth with my ways and habits in school. This is because many of the studies she had provided I could relate to one way or another; or I have seen it occur. A study provided in the very beginning was ten year olds that understood their abilities can be developed, they had what carol called a growth mindset. Then others that thought the challenge was too difficult had a fixed mindset, with their intelligences being fixed for judgement. Studies finding that those who had a fixed mindset looked for those who did worse than they did, or cheat rather than studying, or running from difficulty. Growth mindset, engage deeply with error, process, and learn from it. Learning something new and difficult registers the neurons in the brain forming stronger connections, and overtime they get stronger. Changing your mindset and difficulty can be transformed and neurons are created new connections.

Hello everyone,

I deal with my stress by always just living by thinking that the worse that could happen is I fail and live with said failure. While that thought process isn’t the most effective way to deal with stress for most people I do believe that it worked well for me since I can always use those mistakes, most of the time, to effectively come up with better strategies later to not at least fail as bad the next time. It was effective most of the time for me, although I can’t always have that line of thought since it definitely would not be helpful for me when I was in the army at the age of 17, with the army being a little more serious and less space for error. However, I do believe it is effective in less serious scenarios like giving a speech because the worse that can happen is that I mess up, and learn from my mistakes in the speech, which is why I am not surprised by scoring 84 since I just don’t mind failing a public speech. I will continue to use my current strategy of just being open to failing for my first speech so that I can learn from it and do better later on in the class.

I recall being really nervous for my first job interview. I had to go seek a lot of people for their advice in order to deal with the dread. I did thorough research on interview questions, advice, and company information, as well as taking notes. Then I did regular self-practice in front of the mirror, and rehearsed with family members or friends to gain feedback and get accustomed to gazing eyes. I took a deep breath for 5 seconds straight right before the interview, which I found quite beneficial in slowing down my heartbeat. To control my nerves throughout the interview, I attempted to speak at a steady pace, smile, and make eye contact. These were quite valuable since I came prepared with information gathered from careful research. When talking face-to-face with the interviewer, frequent practice reduced my stuttering and increased my fluency. I found that reminding myself to be calm helped me stay calmer during the interview, especially when I was given unprepared questions.

Because I had to speak in long sentences in front of people in both circumstances, I believe what I did for that first job interview would absolutely work for making a speech. In the event of a speech, I may need to devote more time to note-taking and practice because the speech will occur without interruption, unlike an interview.

For my first speech in this class, I think I would stick to the method of conducting thorough research, note-taking in details, watching videos of others making speeches for ideas on body language and vocal delivery, and ultimately, regular self-practice and rehearsals.