This lovely Willy Wonka quote brings to mind the main idea of Gladwell’s book--that tenacity is key to being successful.
Take a young student named Renee for example. As Gladwell reports, “Alan Schoenfeld, a math professor at Berkeley” (239) create a math computer program dealing with the concept of slope, which required users to use their problem-solving skills to figure out problems.
But, what was special about Renee is that she is not a math major--she is a nurse--and she keeps struggling and trying over and over again in order to solve the problem.
Gladwell writes, “Renee wasn’t a math natural...But Renee persists” (245). That persistence is what makes Renee, and others like her, unique.
As Schoenfield commented, “‘There’s a will to make sense that drives what she does...She wouldn’t accept a superficial ‘Yeah, you’re right’ and walk away...And that’s really unusual’” (245).
To someone like me--who is persistent and always wants to know “why” something happens or “why” something is the way it is--that persistence is not unusual. That persistence is just doing what you have to do to get the job done.
I realized the importance of persistence when I was working with my entire department last month. While there were teachers who had used a new program longer than I had, they gave up trying to find some information after a few attempts. But I kept trying. And, after about 5 minutes of playing around with it, I was able to figure out where the information was that we needed. And others commented on my persistence!
But, the thing is, I did not think anything of my persistence--I did not understand why these teachers would not keep trying different things. And it puzzled me that they were not excited about trying to figure out where the information was (but then again, I find computers really fun and love getting a new electronic device to figure out).
But perhaps it is because there’s the axiom that there’s always something new in education to figure out regarding technology and when teachers finally learn this system, they’ll have another one to learn that’s completely different.
Regardless though, the message remains:
Take a young student named Renee for example. As Gladwell reports, “Alan Schoenfeld, a math professor at Berkeley” (239) create a math computer program dealing with the concept of slope, which required users to use their problem-solving skills to figure out problems.
But, what was special about Renee is that she is not a math major--she is a nurse--and she keeps struggling and trying over and over again in order to solve the problem.
Gladwell writes, “Renee wasn’t a math natural...But Renee persists” (245). That persistence is what makes Renee, and others like her, unique.
As Schoenfield commented, “‘There’s a will to make sense that drives what she does...She wouldn’t accept a superficial ‘Yeah, you’re right’ and walk away...And that’s really unusual’” (245).
To someone like me--who is persistent and always wants to know “why” something happens or “why” something is the way it is--that persistence is not unusual. That persistence is just doing what you have to do to get the job done.
I realized the importance of persistence when I was working with my entire department last month. While there were teachers who had used a new program longer than I had, they gave up trying to find some information after a few attempts. But I kept trying. And, after about 5 minutes of playing around with it, I was able to figure out where the information was that we needed. And others commented on my persistence!
But, the thing is, I did not think anything of my persistence--I did not understand why these teachers would not keep trying different things. And it puzzled me that they were not excited about trying to figure out where the information was (but then again, I find computers really fun and love getting a new electronic device to figure out).
But perhaps it is because there’s the axiom that there’s always something new in education to figure out regarding technology and when teachers finally learn this system, they’ll have another one to learn that’s completely different.
Regardless though, the message remains:
Gladwell states, “Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds” (246).
So basically,
So basically,
May the force of success be with you all.