Metadata
Title
Develop academic optimism
Category
courses
UUID
264a0bb2b52849a3bd7c2e19d20f7c8a
Source URL
https://www.york.ac.uk/students/support/success-at-york-toolkit/optimism/academi...
Parent URL
https://www.york.ac.uk/students/support/success-at-york-toolkit/optimism/
Crawl Time
2026-03-20T07:22:39+00:00
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Develop academic optimism

Source: https://www.york.ac.uk/students/support/success-at-york-toolkit/optimism/academic/ Parent: https://www.york.ac.uk/students/support/success-at-york-toolkit/optimism/

Academic optimism involves seeing your experiences as providing opportunities to grow academically.

In other words, how you can develop academically from what happens to you?

Videos

Video

The unexpected benefit of celebrating failure

Astro Teller, the head of Google X, walks you through his secret to making an organisation where people feel comfortable working on big, risky projects, and exploring wild ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t13Rq4oc7A&ab_channel=TED

Video

Fixed mindset versus growth mindset

This animation walks you through the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset, and how you can shift your viewpoint to help guide you towards success.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv2ar6AKvGc

Video

Our dangerous obsession with perfectionism is getting worse

In this TED Talk, Thomas Curran explores how the pressure to be perfect is driving a rise in mental illness. He discusses the potential causes of this issues, and how we can help create a culture that celebrates imperfections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFG1b1-EsW8&ab_channel=TED

Podcasts

The latest science of growth mindset

Dr Carol Dweck, the leading professional in motivation research, further discusses the idea of a growth vs fixed mindset and the surrounding research in this area.

Mindset zone

Ana Melikian interviews various professionals in this podcast, focusing specifically on the moments they changed their mindsets and started achieving great things.

Next steps

Now you have explored resources to help with developing a stronger sense of academic optimism, the next step is to complete our activities to help you set some goals.

Activities to develop optimism