LearnStorm Growth Mindset: Khan Academy's science content creator on learning strategies

I'm Yuki, and I work as the science content manager. I work on the videos, exercises, and articles in our sciences—so biology, chemistry, and physics. "Failure is growth," I think, is a motto I've seen upstairs. But yeah, for me, growth mindset is really all about embracing failure and embracing, um, just trying things even when you know it's not going to work the first time. It might not even work the second time, but you just keep trying, and you might try to adapt a little bit until you feel like you've really got it because you can do anything.

An example I might give is in chemistry, so that's where my background is, and that's arguably my expertise. It is my expertise, but, um, I wouldn't say that's something that necessarily came that easily to me. I think it took me a really long time to develop good study habits. One thing that was really hard for me from the beginning was like speaking up when I needed help.

So, I learned pretty late in college that, um, if I didn't get something, it really—like, even though I might feel like I was going to look dumb—letting a teacher or a TA know right away that, "Hey, I don't get this. Can you explain this to me again?" was very important. Going to office hours, really being super vocal about when I don't know something, so I could get help as soon as possible.

And then also, um, the other thing I figured out was the more practice I do on something, the better I'll get at it. So even if I think I know something, if I can't actually show that on paper, that doesn't mean anything. Trying to get lots of repetition in on things that I'm not that confident about to really highlight when I don't know things was something I learned very late in college, but it was super helpful to me once I figured that out—not just in chemistry, but in general.