The Importance Of Transitioning To Middle School

Throughout my life I have always coasted through everything that I have ever done. When it came to school you could describe me as an average student when compared to my friends, I always did the bare minimum that I needed to pass, when it came to outside of school it was the same thing when ever my mom or dad told me to do something I always to put in the least amount of effort to accomplish it and waited to the last minute to start doing it. When I read Carol Dweck’s Mindset I learned about fixed mindset and growth mindset, Dweck explained fixed mindset is when a person sets himself up for failure mentally, they always think they wont amount to anything so they just stop trying; while growth mindset is the exact opposite of a fixed mindset,

Sanchez, that is because in middle school the system is completely different compared to elementary school. Transitioning to middle school was a big challenge in of itself, for the first time in my school life I didn 't just have one class to go to and stay there for the whole day instead I had eight classes to go to in a span of eight hours. I had to organize my time in school and outside of school to be able to keep up. The work got harder, the grading policies toughen up, and the teachers didn 't have enough time to help me (Dweck 57). Another thing that made transitioning to middle school difficult was because instead of being in a classroom with one set of students, every class had different students that I didn 't know, all ranging with various intellects. Most of my friends were super clever, when we got our first report card most of them had straight A 's while I had a mix of A 's and B 's and C 's. As soon as I saw their grades I immediately shriveled up, made up excuses to friends about why I didn 't get straight A 's like them. I said things like “the teacher should have bumped me up a few points or the teacher has something against me.” I was able to handle myself adequate enough for a few months but eventually I just got tired of having to give up my time to do my homework and study when I could be playing video games. My fixed mindset led me to make up

My sophomore year I was introduced to tennis, I immediately fell in love with it, but the problem was that my grades were too low for my parents. My mom told me that only way I would be able to play tennis was to get my grades up or else I wouldn 't be able to play at all (Martha). I immediately started to study in hopes of being able to get grades back up to be able to play. My grades started to improve but at a cost I didn 't actually learn anything instead I just regurgitated everything that I memorized. The way I studied was completely different way that Dweck describe growth mindset people studied, I sucked all of the information from my books like a vacuum cleaner, I didn 't study to understand the subject instead I studied just to ace the test (61). Even though I was passing my tests and doing all my work like a growth minded person would, I was just doing it for my own desire of playing tennis not because I wanted to get smarter. Due to my mindset being how it was when it came time for me take the SAT 's I ended up getting low scores which stopped me from going to the college that I wanted to go to be able to play