From Failing at St. Andrew's to Failing at Stanford: Why I Keep Taking Risks

On my first day at St. Andrew’s eight years ago, the school’s Dean of Studies strode in front of the disjointed, awkward bunch of pre-teens to champion a Stanford psychologist’s emerging theory. He sternly held up a framed poster, with two simple words in boldface at the top: growth mindset.

 

This teacher, who I later learned was Glenn Whitman, explained that those who hold a growth mindset believe intelligence can change through effort and experiences. Although, he remarked, most people still hold an antithetical mindset, called the fixed mindset, we have the agency to change our beliefs, and thus alter the course of how we think and act. In essence, Mr. Whitman proclaimed that we – not our luck, our environment, nor our genes – could decide our futures. And the thought of that power was both terrifying and exhilarating.

 

But harnessing that power isn’t just up to the individual; in reality, it relies on the work of a community. Each teacher I encountered at St. Andrew’s truly believed I could succeed, for the growth mindset was built into the framework of the institution. We earned effort grades alongside academic ones, athletes were recognized for their improvement more than anything else, and each student was required to challenge themselves by taking an art course. From cross country to Spanish, I struggled, wriggled, failed, and bounced back, but those struggles were most pronounced in writing.

 

I am not a natural writer. As a middle schooler, typing anything longer than a paragraph paralyzed me, and by ninth grade my essays still consisted of simple sentences using various conjugations of the verb “to be.” Each school year my most dreaded subject remained English, and I couldn’t fathom how I would tackle the beast known as the senior paper. And although every English and history teacher I had inched my capabilities along, my writing progressed by bounds and leaps my junior year because of AP English and my teacher, Morgan Evans.

 

With a booming voice, dynamic hand gestures, and frazzled note-taking, Mr. Evans exuded an aura of zeal for the books we were reading that made you want to learn. During our first few in-class discussions, I felt like every comment I posited was swiftly crushed by Mr. Evans’s and my classmates’ superior ideas. On my first essay, I received the lowest mark I had on any paper to date. But Mr. Evans’s love of teaching galvanized me to want to learn.

 

I began meeting with Mr. Evans outside of class – during break, after school, even during lunch – to work on my papers. Although my academic grades did not immediately improve, Mr. Evans commended me with higher effort marks. And as I persisted, Mr. Evans noticed and reciprocated. When the senior paper came knocking at my door a year later, I knew I would triumph.

 

By then, Mr. Whitman had founded the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning (CTTL), whose mission is to use Mind, Brain, and Education Science to “allow teachers to maximize their effectiveness and students to achieve their highest potential.” As part of one of his campaigns to disseminate the ideas of the CTTL, Mr. Whitman created t-shirts proudly displaying the word “yet” in large font, and, as a side note underneath, added “it’s our mindset.” While he went on to explain this “mindset” to the whole school in a talk at chapel, all I could envision was the poster from sixth grade which still hung by the middle school entrance.

 

Since coming to Stanford, I’ve had countless “yet” experiences. I’ve tried half a dozen different clubs – the Stanford Band, Cardinal Calypso, Fascinate Magazine, Queer Liberation, Stanford Kenpo, Students for a Sustainable Stanford – all of which I’ve quit. At the halfway point of the first quarter, I found myself struggling in my first STEM class at Stanford, Intro to Chemistry. And to this day, I haven’t declared a major, and my advisor lovingly compares my schedule to a poor player’s darts on a dartboard.

 

But along the way, I’ve grown. I’ve fallen in love with a few student organizations that now mean a lot to me, and have a list of others I want to try this coming school year. After venturing to office hours and requesting a tutor, my grades in Chemistry began to improve. And although I haven’t set my heart on a major quite yet, I have some pretty good ideas that I plan to explore more deeply.

 

Despite the uncertainty of freshman fall, there was one thing I could count on: succeeding in my writing seminar. While many of my peers moaned over writing more than three pages, I welcomed the assignments as old friends. Right off the bat, my instructor informed me my work was some of the best in the class, and at the end of the quarter recommended that I submit my research paper to a school-wide competition. I smiled when she said this, recalling the senior paper, Mr. Evans, and countless other teachers I’d had at St. Andrew’s who helped me get to that point.

 

While I have put in the hours studying, reading, writing, taking risks, failing and trying again, I’ve had St. Andrew’s with me every step of the way.