On Grit
The following is a modified excerpt from the August 2019 edition of the On The Move newsletter.
Reader goal: Reflect on your understanding of resilience.
I first became obsessed with the idea of becoming the grittiest version of myself in June 2019. Maybe it was realizing that I'd be starting medical school that Fall. Maybe it was realizing that there would be no time like that summer. Maybe it was Maybelline. Either way, my mind was made up and I was off to figure out how to increase my mental strength, tap into my tenacity, and GET GRITTIER.
You know that phrase, What doesn't kill you makes you stronger? Well, the single biggest thing I've learned about grit and hardship is that it's 1000x more nuanced than the 7 words above suggest. In fact, children and adolescents who "suffer without control" have a lot of trouble developing grit and perseverance... and I don't need a scientist to tell me why.
Sometimes the things that don't kill us crush us.
People experience crappy things all the time. I grew up in a neighborhood where people experienced crappy things everyday. But the crappy things that really crush us are the things we feel we have no control over. I think back to my elementary classmates who said things like they weren't "math people" or "made for school" and I wish that someone had told them that math and school were meant to be challenging and they'd get through it. I wish the "smart kids" weren't praised for being so "naturally smart". I wish we'd all been raised in a world that embraced the kind of growth mindset that tells you and me and everyone that we are capable of getting there... wherever there might be... with help and hard work.
I wish everyone had the opportunities I had to grow my grit.
When a medical school interviewer asked me what I attributed my success to I told them my tenacity. When the question came up again this year on the residency interview trail, I instead said, "the opportunities and circumstances and teachers and books and movies that made me feel like I was in control of my life, and that my actions and efforts mattered because these things taught me to be tenacious".
Duckworth (author of Grit*) raises her kids using a "one hard thing" rule. It comes in three parts: everyone has to do one hard thing, you can only quit when a natural stopping point arrives (not when the going gets tough), and you get to pick your hard thing. Her reason for the rule is this: our grit grows when we stick with our hard things because we teach ourselves that we are capable of getting through them and succeeding in spite of them.
I decided on a hard thing when I was very young, I had a math teacher who didn't let me quit when I wanted to quit, and the result is my now-deeply-held belief that I can get through anything.
Melody (@mezonthemove), is a fourth-year medical student and online creator living in New York City.
