True Grit
Today, as soon as you find a few spare moments, go to the New York Times’ website and search for “The Character Test,” an article by Paul Tough that appeared in Sunday’s NYT magazine. (You can also use the link that appears below to hop to the article quickly.) The by-line to the article really says it all: “Why our kids’ success—and happiness—may depend less on perfect performance than on learning how to deal with failure.”
The article addresses the efforts of several educators to create a character curriculum. However, what I found most fascinating was Tough’s reportage of research undertaken by Angela Duckworth, now an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Duckworth’s early research caused her to conclude that the most successful people around generally combined “a passion for a single mission with an unswerving dedication to achieve that mission, whatever the obstacles and however long it might take.” She named the quality “grit,” and since then, she has developed a 12-item questionnaire to measure grit. Duckworth has taken the “grit test” to West Point and found it the most accurate predictor of which cadets would survive or drop out of the school’s grueling summer training course known as Beast Barracks.
It turns out that having a high IQ may be great, but the best predictor of success is having grit. If you're starting work as an intern, summer associate or new hire, show you have true grit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret-to-success-is-failure.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=The Character Test&st=cse
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