The Score of One's Grit and Preservance

A basic definition of grit would be “having passion and perseverance for long-term goals.” Passion means to have the ability to have stamina, and sticking with your future day in and day out for years and working really hard in order to turn your future into a reality. It is also living life like it is a marathon, not a sprint and about having direction and commitment. When you have this type of passion for something, you will be able to stay committed to a task that may be tough or monotonous.

Perseverance means to pursue; to continue working hard even after facing difficulty or failure. When children are taught about human brains; how it changes and grows in response to challenge, they are much more likely to keep going when they fail because they do not believe that failure is a permanent condition. We have to be willing to fail and keep going in order for lessons to be learned. There are also characteristics to having grit, which is: courage, conscientiousness, perseverence, resilience, and passion. In this sense courage is following your vision, no matter where it takes you. Conscientiousness indicates a desire to do a task well. These types of people are efficient and organized, and do not rest until what they are doing is done right. Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties and failures. There are also ways for a person to figure out his or her scores for grit, perseverance, and passion.

My grit score on the 12-item scale is 4.08. I believe that this grit score adequetly describes my level of grit because of how focused and determined I am towards my academic goals. The academic standards that I have for myself are so high that I do not accept anything lower than a 90 for my grades. The reason for this is because of how competitive the field of study that I want to go in is. The medical field is so competitive that they will look at someone with a 4.0 grade point average before a person with a 3.9 grade point average and those little points matter as well. I also like to get my homework done early so that if something happens that will not allow me to get my work done on time, I will already have it done. Another thing is that I always apply myself. I do not wait for things to come my way or wait on other people. I like to get things done the right way and early if it is possible.

The score that I got on the passion subscale is 4.17. When comparing my passion and perseverence subscale scores together, I am evenly matched in both of these areas. My strengths for passion is that new ideas or projects do not distracts me from previos ones because I can make sure I focus on the one that was assigned to me first. Also, my interests never really change often. For the most part I may just start liking something new on top of what I am already interested in. I do not obsess over something just to just to lose interest later because that would just be a waste of my time. I am a person who is really good at planning and making achievements to meet a goal, so when I make goals, I make strict and high standards for myslef to keep going and to pursue what I want to do. When focusing on my goals and projects, I typically know that the goals I set for myself will not happen overnight so I am good with sticking to things that take longer than a month to complete. I sometimes catch myself thinking about other careers in the medical field that interest me like dental, or medical assistant, but as I keep thinking about it, I know I am not committed to doing something like that because I do not have a passion for it. Passion is an even match for me because ever since I was little I was passionate about helping people and being kind. When I was younger I would see homeless people and felt so bad and always wished I could help everyone. I have always had a passion for helping people. I used to volunteer with my JROTC club and we would pack lunches for little boys and girls at an orphanage and I loved it.

I recieved a score of 4.0 for perseverence. As I said in my previous paragraph, I am very close to an even match for both areas. One of my many strengths that I think stands out the most in me is that no matter what comes at me, it will not stop me from pursuing what I want to do in life. For example, I know that you have to be good at science to be a doctor, unfortunately I am not, but that is not going to stop me from doing what I want to do. This just means that I have to work and study harder to get where I want to be. The setbacks that I have had, never discourage me, and if anything it motivates me to work even harder than before. I am a very hard worker; I work part-time and I am a full-time student. Although, I am always tired, but like I said before, it will not stop me! Every class I start, I finish. If the class is hard then I teach myself the material and attend tutoring. I apply myself all the time because no one will do it for me. I have not yet achieved a goal that took years of work, but that is in the process right now of me going to school to become a doctor. I show that I care in all of the work I do. I care so much that before turning anything in I try to make sure everything is perfect so that I can get the highest grade possible.

In the future I can use my level of grit to keep applying myself to do what I need to do, I can use my level of passion to put towards what I actually have a passion for and not do it just for the money, and for perseverence I just need to make sure I keep that same level to keep moving and not let anything get in the way of what I want to do know matter how many times I fail or come across a difficult obstacle to get through. Specific areas of life that I intend to apply this to is mostly to college, medical school and my career. I chose these specific areas because it will help keep me motivated and keeps me focused to be successful. Some changes that I do need to make is to remind myself that I do not have to be so hard on myself because I am doing good and not everything has to be perfect. I, myself may hinder me from making this change because I really want to be successful.