Some students are just plain old smart. However, if that student doesn’t work hard, the people who do work hard can easily pass by the ones with natural talent.

According to Ruth Tam’s article over Angela Duckworth’s theory of grit in the Washington Post, Angela Duckworth was once a teacher and is now a psychologist in New York. She noticed IQ was not the only difference between her best students and her worst students.

She realized that some of her top performers didn’t have great IQs and her smartest students weren’t doing very well. She knew that all of her students would do just fine in her class if they worked hard enough.

After studying students and adults in challenging settings, she came to a conclusion that the characteristic that significantly predicts success is grit.

Grit is the perseverance and determination to reach your goals. You have to have grit in order to reach your goals. Having grit as a personality is one of the best characteristics to have.

The ones with grit are the ones who are going to be doctors and lawyers not only because they are smart but because they are the ones who have stuck with their goals. Just because a person is smart doesn’t mean they will be successful in the future if they don’t have determination.

Grit doesn’t last for week or a month but it lasts for long term goals. It is sticking with your future for years. The only way for people to make high standard goals is to work very hard in order to achieve them and to not settle.

I have made the conclusion that the people who don’t know where they are going in life by their senior year are the ones who aren’t going to have the chance to reach high expectations they have for themselves. Students can’t just go with the flow anymore. They have to follow the path they have worked their whole life for.

If they haven’t been working hard to make that path, their life is actually going to be harder than someone with a big-time job. The sooner students realize this, the better their life will be in the future.

15acossaart@usd489.com