Growth vs Fixed Mindset

Living Proof contains stories from mathematicians who felt that they didn’t belong when they started out in their journey, illustrating the internal reframing, or external encouragement, that helped them get over their impostor syndrome.

I particularly liked the story of Laura Taalman, Hitting the Wall:

Having to work so hard that semester and develop a thick skin for feeling stupid all the time really helped me in my career. I don’t think mathematics was ever “easy” for me again after I got to college; it was always a struggle. College math courses were all hard, graduate school was hard, and researching and writing my thesis was hard, too. But at each step, it was a struggle that I loved working through. I didn’t mind being stuck and feeling dumb. I knew I could get through it if I kept plugging away. In today’s language, I would say I was lucky to have formed a “growth mindset” about learning math — I was willing to work on hard problems to find success — rather than a “fixed mindset”, where I judged myself harshly when I didn’t know something.

To this day, I still benefit from this mindset, and I’ve basically made a career out of trying new things what I don’t know anything about. It’s in the process of making mistakes and figuring out how to make progress where the real fun begins.

Ostensibly these stories are for and by mathematicians, but I felt there is something in there for all of us.