@blossom I am not sure that is what Dweck is saying. She is not saying try and get good at something that you detest, just for the challenge of it. I thought she was saying…well. I will let her say it in her own words
I don’t think there is a definitive answer to this. Some students don’t mind being at the bottom and they thrive on the challenge of improvement - they get a fire in their belly so to speak. Other students falter if they’re not among the best and having them continue down that path will only lead to mental destruction.
I would tell a student that if they absolutely love their major and want to continue on that particular career path, they should persevere a bit longer and tweak how they’re approaching it IF they have a history of rising to the challenge. But, if that student has truly given up and is mentally degrading themselves, then it’s definitely time for either a change of major or a change of venue to one where (s)he is one of the big fish.
I think it is this concept of Resilience that separates Gladwell’s and Dweck’s ideas. Gladwell suggests that the better and rational course of action would be to be among people who won’t push you to your limit and thereby test your resilience everyday. He looks at the world around him and sees that as a recipe for failure. He suggests that instead you should aim to be the “big fish in the little pond”, where other people will be testing their resilience against you.
Dweck on the other hand is urging her readers to embrace “difficult challenges” with the confidence that with dedication and hard work even an average person, with no real innate brilliance can achieve great success. She is in some sense advocating for the “little fish in the big pond” approach where you will have to test your resilience against the big fish by stretching your learning goals and working really hard. The big fish in her case may very well be the steep hill of a challenging course that clearly looks intimidating
@blossom: “Do you really think that someone who loves music who is decently intelligence but doesn’t have strong musical aptitude can becoming “pretty good” at it?”
Actually, yes. Absolutely anybody (assuming no physical limitations), if they can devote 40 hours a week to playing an instrument, will become pretty darn good at that instrument. Maybe not get hired by a Big 5 orchestra, but good enough where regular folks would say “wow, he/she’s pretty darn good!”
Call it arrogance if you like, but I know a history major (who almost flunked out of his Ivy-equivalent) who later on in life became a quant.
Granted, it’s a luxury to have saved enough to spend years studying math without having to work, but that is a time/responsibility limitation, not a talent limitation.
Thanks for the link, mom2and. I will see what publications I can access for free from my university site.
Like most other posters, I don’t think there’s one answer to this problem.
I know I posted a long time ago about a kid who got into Cornell through some sort of special program for disadvantaged students. He went to a special summer prep program at Cornell with the other kids in the program. He majored in engineering and really struggled. He transferred to a lower tier school–IIRC it was Youngstown State,but that may be incorrect. He was really happy he transferred because he found the courses much less theoretical. I got some of the details wrong and someone told the kid about my post and he came and posted more accurately about his experience. I do remember that he felt he would never have made it through Cornell engineering and he had made it through another ABET accredited program with good enough grades to get a job in engineering. So he felt transferring down was a good decision. (I tried to find the thread but couldn’t.)
On the flip side, a young neighbor went to an Evangelical Protestant college --it would describe itself as “Christian.” He majored in pre-med and got great grades. Then he took and bombed the MCAT. Took off a year and worked part time and studied for the MCAT. He got a better score, but not good enough to get into med school. He went to podiatry school. A college classmate’s son did something similar at a regional college and ended up not getting into med school. He became a nurse practitioner.
Now, there’s no way to really know, but I assume that at a highly competitive college, they would have dropped the premed track earlier because they would have struggled more for worse grades. Now, if they end up being happy and fulfilled as a podiatrist or nurse practitioner, then maybe sticking with the pre med course of study makes sense. If, however, they would have gone in a different direction if they had realized earlier that med school wasn’t going to work out, then it isn’t.
I do believe that one can develop capability in mathematics (and presumably other subjects) through hard work. It really does change one’s brain.
On the other hand, I think that some of the conclusions that are drawn based on Dweck’s work (perhaps not her on work itself) are wildly over-optimistic. In order for the challenging class to work (to increase capability), it has to be possible for the student to get a toe-hold on the subject. This may not happen in the time frame available, in the normal structure of things at a university. I am actually an advocate for longer college programs for students who are willing to work hard and have the baseline capability, but who are at a disadvantage due to pre-college education.
When I suggested taking “all the time you want” to understand Dummit and Foote, I meant that literally . . . years, if it takes that, as it probably will, even for someone who is interested in math. I will try to look up the abstract algebra texts that are used for the higher-level freshman entrants at Caltech and Cornell. I know both places start the well-qualified math students out in a course of that type.
Sometimes, the decision is made for you. For example, if an aspiring engineer earns a 3.3 GPA in his/her first year of college, but the college requires a 3.5 GPA to declare the desired engineering major, the student either has to give up his/her goal of becoming an engineer or transfer to a different school where s/he can get into the desired engineering major.
Based on my experiences, if you are really in over your head, just scraping by though you are trying, I would generally recommend either switching majors to something you are actually good at, or transferring to an easier school.
The trauma to one’s psyche and self-esteem caused by just struggling by in college can be significant. Maybe you try harder, with still poor results, but now it detracts from your social life and you are miserable in more facets of your life even beyond academics. It can become a downward spiral.
Better to go someplace where you can feel decent about yourself. If the new place has somewhat lesser repute, so be it. That’s who you are. There’s no shame in that. Love yourself.
Just my opinion, YMMV and all that.
Some people are more resilient than others and instead of being dejected they get extra help and find out they can compete after all, or they may make a sensible decision to try something else.
This reminds me of a friend of mine who was a math major at Harvard. She was very good at math, and did fine, but what she increasingly realized is that compared to other majors she was merely competent. She was not going to make any major contributions to the field. There were many, many people who were brilliant. So she went to law school. I don’t think majoring in math hurt her.
Figuring out what you are good at and what you like to do, is part of growing up. I realized my freshman year in college that being an academic was not for me. I am much more interested in producing stuff. I ended up being an architect. I actually really do like doing academic research, but not full time. I did a fairly academic thesis in the end, and I’ve done a couple of local history projects in the last few years that have been tremendous fun.
I have a freshman at MIT. With enormous workload it doesn’t help to be surrounded by the brightest minds in the world while struggling to keep a head above the water. I found those few blogs very helpful.
@Ballerina016 Thank you so much for posting those links. Fascinating reading.
I think there is some truth to this, but a lot depends on how you define “pretty good.” Also, I think there are some innate differences that make it impossible for certain people to get even “pretty good” at some things. Music was mentioned–some people simply cannot become singers because they cannot overcome intonation problems. A person in this situation will simply have to give up dreams of being a professional singer–although they might choose a related career. It is also pretty clear to me that some people have a much greater knack for certain things than others–a prime example is foreign languages–I recall that high school French was pretty easy for me, but for my friend, it was REALLY easy, even though he never studied.
This kind of discussion always reminds me of one of my favorite old CC discussions: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/753128-michael-jordan-vs-my-roommate.html
Actually, I think Anders Ericsson’s work that has been documented in the book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise seems to suggest otherwise. Incidentally Gladwell, took Ericsson’s research and twisted it into the simplistic 10,000 hour rule, which is not really accurate.
Who am I going to believe, Anders Ericsson, or my own ears?
Sometimes, the subject that stymies you is required for the major but is not central to it. Organic chemistry for biology majors comes to mind here. Many – perhaps most – biology majors need only the most cursory understanding of organic chemistry to complete the rest of the major and to pursue a related career. Yet they have to take an extremely detailed and intense course in the subject.
My remark about Dummit and Foote’s abstract algebra text was not entirely facetious. If a student does not have the preparation needed to succeed in a course in the time frame of the course, it is likely to end poorly, no matter how persistent and resilient the student is. By all means, an interested student should persist with a course for which he/she is prepared, even if it is challenging and even if he/she is not in the top half of the group. Students may assume that they are not prepared for a course, when in fact they have all of the necessary background; it’s just that the course is more challenging than their usual courses.
Also, the fact that a student is doing “all right” at first, with a given level of effort, does not mean that it is safe to continue with that level of effort. To take an example from chemistry, rather than mathematics: Organic chemistry is normally taught at universities as a course that does not assume prior knowledge of organic chemistry. With most general chemistry courses, and most organic chemistry courses, the details of general chemistry are not required, either. So typically, a student enters this course with 100% of the background knowledge needed to succeed. The student scores 80% in the first semester/term. So far, okay. But now going into the second semester/term, the student has only 80% of the background knowledge required to succeed in that semester/term. If the student continues to spend the same amount of time on the course, and has the same study habits, the predictable performance in the second semester/term is 64%. This is where being on the semester system is a real advantage! Because if the university has quarters, the predicted performance in the third quarter of sophomore organic chemistry has dropped to 51.2%. This is how one winds up with medians of 23 in organic chemistry (out of 100) and modes of 4, as happened when in an organic class when I was an undergrad.
I suspect that something similar holds for the introductory calculus sequence (through diff eq).
Perhaps another way to make QuantMech’s point is that if the students who did worse than you this semester don’t continue, next semester you will be the weakest student.
In a book like Peak, are there examples of those who have spent years (starting from childhood) in deliberate, proper practice who have not become “experts”? The kid who is a basketball whiz in middle school, but stops growing at 5’8" may be a very good basketball player, an expert perhaps among his peers, but is highly unlikely to become an NBA star because he is just not big enough. The same player at 6’8" in all likelihood would be a star.
Absolutely, focused practice/study can get one very far, but if someone has no or very little talent, the chances are not good that they will pursue that area long enough to get to the expert level. Thus, there are no good control cases for research like that done in Peak (I haven’t read the book, so just based on website reviews and summaries).
Also, as others have said elsewhere, there are countless athletes, musicians, singers and actors that have been well-trained, properly practice etc. but do not have the “spark” or “it” factor that makes them a star. They may well be an expert and do well in regional theater/orchestras or lower level sports leagues, but will never make it to the top. What is the difference between Michael Jordan, Steph Curry or Lebron James and other guys that make it to the NBA? Is it really their level of appropriate practice or is it exceptional talent, along with practice?
Academics are a bit different. I think there are very few areas of study where a person with average to above average intelligence could not become an expert, with a lot of work, the right course of study and appropriate mentoring. The message that working hard will allow a student to excel is really an important one and students, especially those that make it to a top college (assuming this was on their own merits and not due to an excessive amount of HS tutoring or some special status), have the ability to study whatever they want, as long as they are willing to do the work.
@mom2and & @Hunt: Right, you have to be superelite in the field to make the NBA and (usually) to be paid to sing.
Typically not to get a job as an engineer.
But if someone is years behind in math (has a shaky foundation that would take years of practice to fix), majoring in engineering just isn’t going to work out at this point in time.