Despite numerous setbacks, insults, and moments of reckoning, Alice perseveres–as is expected of a story’s protagonist. The young girl surmounts the challenges of unpleasant personalities, unruly royalty, and a grumpy caterpillar, with little evidence of intrinsic or extrinsic reward–so why does Alice persist? Perhaps Alice serves as a classic example of a person with grit.
When I went to school, grit was called “resilience” and it received a facelift when Dweck’s “growth mindset” became à la mode; no matter the name, the academic buzzword “grit,” continues to be regarded by educators with an almost semi-mystical awe. But why do educators value grit so much? Grit is the “passion and persistence” that is regarded as a silver bullet of educational success; really, it’s more than mere silver–grit is gold. With limited interaction time with students, such gritty gold is very challenging for advisors to alchemize. If students haven’t acquired it from their formative education, advisors need to teach grit-building skills in college. And most advisors focus their strategies to do exactly that–advisors help students prioritize and plan; we motivate advisees to think positively; and we guide learners to work toward the end goal. As advisors, our primary focus is to support learners so that they are successful, and we use academic resilience, growth mindset, and essentially, grit to get students there.
But should grit be the focus?
Grit means bouncing back from adversity, and bouncing back from adversity takes determination, drive, and well–maybe not grit? Harvard researchers Rose and Ogas surmise, based on their research, that people who exhibit mastery in a field can similarly attribute their success to having “‘started down one path because they thought that was what they were supposed to do, and then at some point they realized that they didn’t like that path at all,’ Rose said. ‘During that period, they fell into something else and made a series of choices that led them to success'” (Selingo, 2016). Basically, what compelled people to success in the Harvard study seems a lot like what compelled Alice to keep wandering in Wonderland, despite being unsure about her choices.
Now, nobody can go to Wonderland to verify if Harvard theories apply there; Alice was really the only outsider who went and returned. More importantly though, nobody has to. The idea of grit as the difference for individuals who persist at a given task vs. those who do not oversimplifies individuality. My advisees who have been academically dismissed and afterwards appealed the decision have had oodles of grit–parent deaths, cancer diagnoses, sexual assault, incarceration, parental abandonment, grit, grit, grit, grit, grit. Students who can maintain a desire to stay in school, passing or not, while dealing with serious issues like that have grit. But facing the adversity is not enough. If grit were what made the difference, retention of my students from the inner city and poor rural communities would be a non-issue. Rose’s and Ogas’ findings conclude that there is no silver bullet to perseverance, rather they found that the path to success is “different for everyone” (2016)
So why focus on building grit? The concept of grit is a pill that’s easy to swallow, but it’s no cure for educational ailments. Returning to Alice, for a moment, what strikes me as an advisor, is that at moments of duress and transition, it’s not her determination that keeps Alice going on her path through Wonderland; it’s her curiosity. Consider these instances:
- When Alice is trapped at the bottom of the rabbit hole and wants to go back home, she suddenly is struck by curiosity and compelled to move forward.
- When she has just met the Cheshire cat and watched him disappear, she reconciles her inability to understand the circumstances as curious.
- When she stormed off in frustration from the tea party, she was upset, but then saw something that piqued her curiosity and moved on.
Alice’s curiosity compels her to try new things and let go of frustration and failure. Alice’s curiosity helps her to reconcile and accept new concepts, even if she doesn’t immediately understand them. At the end of her journey, Alice reflects on her Wonderland experiences and accepts them as a “curious dream.” The element of curiosity allows her to grow (literally and figuratively) at times when a more rigid framework of understanding could lock her in place. 
Rather than grit, curiosity also allows her to maintain and develop a more complex a sense of self as she straddles two worlds with competing demands–childhood and growing up; knowledge and confusion; home and Wonderland. We can see this in her frustrating attempt to be two selves:
“Come, there’s no use in crying like that!” said Alice to herself rather sharply. “I advise you to leave off this minute!” She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes; and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. “But it’s no use now,” thought poor Alice, “to pretend to be two people! Why, there’s hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!” (Carroll, Originally published in 1865)
Though her sense of self is limited, her curiosity still helps fuels her understanding and growth so that she can continue to navigate Wonderland. I’d propose that for students, instilling values that support a sense of curiosity, wonder, and excitement about learning new things will help them to progress along their educational path moreso than grit. Curiosity is the intellectual and ideological flexibility that enables learners to adapt to new situations. This is not a new idea–in 2006, Cordova proposed that a focus on curiosity could restore student success and renew the public’s faith in higher education. Then, based on this idea, Campbell and Nutt (2008)proposed that academic advising was one of the best avenues through which Cordova’s proposal should be driven home:
Cordova suggests that a renewed focus on student success could “reinvigorate the public’s appreciation” of higher education as a place of opportunity in which to grow, to dream, and to think. In this regard student success is about facilitating curiosity, wonder, and immersion in the college experience and, as Cordova says, institutions should focus their efforts on supporting those college experiences that create, foster, and cultivate student curiosity and engagement in learning—all in service of their achievement or a set of essential outcomes as the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) has suggested. While certainly there are many ways to support student immersion and engagement in learning, one strategy that is increasingly being acknowledged for its potential in this regard is academic advising.
How, then, do advisors intentionally instill curiosity? Landon and Hammock (2009) felt that the strategy of “Planned Happenstance,” which had curiosity as a component, along with persistence, flexibility, optimism, and risk-taking, would allow advisors to support learners in developing curiosity. They recommended, “to help students develop the trait of curiosity, advisors should direct students to explore new learning opportunities that will teach them the process of defining their personal interests.” Individual needs matter, and spending our precious time with advisees to help develop curiosity may be the crucial change we need to foster greater success in higher education.
Moreso than grit, curiosity is a genuine trait, not a trendy definition of the newest educational ideals. Based on its presence in 1865 and today, investing our energy into developing curiosity among advisees will not be dismissed as an educational fad five years from now. Curiosity is the cornerstone for inquiry, for critical thinking, and a desire that can be tapped, if only we can focus on developing that habit of mind. And we must assume that our students are naturally curious–otherwise, they never would have jumped down the rabbit hole called higher education. But is that assumption accurate?
To be continued…
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