Grit(68)

On the other half of the essays, researchers affixed a Post-it note that read: I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them. This was the wise feedback condition.

So that teachers would not see which student received which note, and so that students would not notice that some of their classmates had received a different note than they had, researchers placed each essay in a folder for teachers to hand back to the students during class.

Students were then given the option to revise their essays the following week.

When the essays were collected, David discovered that about 40 percent of the students who’d received the placebo control Post-it note decided to turn in a revised essay, compared to about twice that number—80 percent of the students—who’d received the Post-it note communicating wise feedback.

In a replication study with a different sample, students who received the wise feedback Post-it—“I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them”—made twice as many edits to their essays as students in the placebo control condition.

Most certainly, Post-it notes are no substitute for the daily gestures, comments, and actions that communicate warmth, respect, and high expectations. But these experiments do illuminate the powerful motivating effect that a simple message can have.



* * *



Not every grit paragon has had the benefit of a wise father and mother, but every one I’ve interviewed could point to someone in their life who, at the right time and in the right way, encouraged them to aim high and provided badly needed confidence and support.

Consider Cody Coleman.

A couple of years ago, Cody sent me an email. He’d seen my TED talk on grit and wanted to know if we could talk sometime. He thought perhaps his personal story might be helpful. He was majoring in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and was on the cusp of graduating with a near-perfect GPA. From his perspective, talent and opportunity had very little to do with his accomplishments. Instead, success had been all about passion and perseverance sustained over years and years.

“Sure, I said, “let’s talk.” Here’s what I learned.

Cody was born thirty miles east of Trenton, New Jersey, at the Monmouth County Correctional Institution. His mother was declared insane by the FBI and, when Cody came along, was imprisoned for threatening to kill a senator’s child. Cody has never met his father. Cody’s grandmother took legal custody of Cody and his brothers, and probably saved his life by doing so. But she was not a prototypically wise parent. She may have wanted to be loving and strict, but both her body and mind were in decline. As Cody describes it, he was soon doing more parenting—and cooking and cleaning—than she was.

“We were poor,” Cody explained. “When my school did food drives, the food went to my family, because we were the poorest in the neighborhood. And the neighborhood itself wasn’t all that great. My school district scored below average in every category imaginable.

“To make matters worse,” Cody continued, “I wasn’t really an athletic or smart person. I started out in remedial English classes. My math scores were average, at best.”

And then what happened?

“One day, my oldest brother—he was eighteen years older than me—he comes home. It was the summer after my freshman year in high school. He drove up from Virginia to pick me up to spend two weeks with him, and on the drive back to his place, he turns and asks me, ‘Where do you want to go to college?’?”

Cody told him, “I don’t know. . . . I want to go to a good school. Maybe somewhere like Princeton.” And then immediately, he took it back: “There’s no way a school like Princeton would accept me.”

“Why wouldn’t Princeton take you?” Cody’s brother asked him. “You’re doing all right in school. If you work harder, if you keep pushing yourself, you can get to that level. You have nothing to lose by trying.”

“That’s when a switch flipped in my head,” Cody said. “I went from ‘Why bother?’ to ‘Why not?’ I knew I might not get into a really good college, but I figured, if I try, I have a chance. If I never try, then I have no chance at all.”

The next year, Cody threw himself into his schoolwork. By junior year he was earning straight As. As a senior, Cody set about finding the best college in the country for computer science and engineering. He changed his dream school from Princeton to MIT. During this transformative period, he met Chantel Smith, an exceptionally wise math teacher who all but adopted him.

It was Chantel who paid for Cody’s driving lessons. It was Chantel who collected a “college dorm fund” to pay for the supplies he’d need once he moved. It was Chantel who mailed sweaters, hats, gloves, and warm socks to him for the cold Boston winters, who worried about him every day, who welcomed him home each holiday break, who stood by Cody at his grandmother’s funeral. It was in Chantel’s home that Cody first experienced waking on Christmas morning to presents with his name on them, where he decorated Easter eggs for the first time, and where, at the age of twenty-four, he had his first family birthday party.

MIT wasn’t entirely smooth sailing, but the new challenges came with an “ecosystem of support,” as Cody put it. Deans, professors, older students in his fraternity, roommates, and friends—compared to what he’d experienced growing up, MIT was a haven of attention.