A500.1.5.RB_CavaliereMike

As a rule, people generally don't like to be confused. They don't see a value in it. They see it as a hassle or personal shortcoming, rather than as a road toward deeper understanding. When you're taking a full slate of graduate-level classes after being out of school for nearly a decade, though, as I am -- and you're fitting in assignments in between a full-time job, a family, and a never-seems-to-tire-herself-out puppy -- occasional confusion is unavoidable.

And that's a good thing.

 According to the Foundation for Critical Thinking, a key facet of intellectual perseverance is "a sense of the need to struggle" (Valuable, 2014) with complex ideas that don't "click" right away. I'm not sure any student could be truly successful in an accelerated degree program without knowing that feeling well. It's the feeling that drives me to work late at night even though I got sick of staring at the computer screen hours ago. It's the thing that makes me spend my lunch hour reading textbooks or writing essays, rather than going out for a taco and a break. 

 Without expecting and accepting the need to struggle with this stuff, a student would be selling him or herself short in this kind of program. That hit home for me the most last term when I was about halfway through my Corporate Finance class, and I realized how much more calculus was involved than I thought there would be going in -- not good news for a guy who majored in creative nonfiction back in undergrad and has never even taken a low-level calculus class.

The only way I made it through that course was by embracing my frustrations with it. Of course it was hard -- it was supposed to be -- but by focusing on the material, rather than on my difficulty grasping it, I narrowed my focus and learned to give in to the process. Looking back, I think that class marks the moment that I truly became a student in this program, rather than just someone taking classes in it. I was in. There was no turning back now.

 I believe good leaders need this sort of self-awareness, too. On top of being able to focus on the facts and power through the obstacles, a good leader needs to possess the intellectual humility to know what they do not know. That awareness leads to an openness to new ideas, collaboration and lifetime learning. It's the thing that makes a person willing to struggle -- to feel that "need" to struggle -- in order to become better. And if a leader, or a student, isn't focused on becoming better, it's pretty simple: They never will be.
References

 "Valuable intellectual traits." (2014). Retrieved from: http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/valuable-intellectual-traits/528

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