What matters most to you, and why?
What matters most to you and why?
Grit, the ability to continue on despite frustration or difficulty, is a precursor to resilience, and an exercise in self-belief. Throughout my life, I’ve experienced the benefits of embracing challenges that demand grit to be overcome. During my freshman year of college, I struggled in my first classes in calculus and organic chemistry, but continued to take courses in hard math and science. When I transferred to the College of Engineering, I learned that for me, grit is the key to fulfillment.
When I joined [company name] Leadership Development Rotational Program, my factory had recently suffered material misprocessing events. Leadership asked me and my colleague to design a system to eliminate future risk. We weren’t given a blueprint for the project—only a problem that needed a timely solution. The development of our system, known today as System-Preparatory-Operated Optical Character Recognition Kit (SPOOK), was an exercise in grit. I taught myself Python to write the system’s software, and learned the basics of circuit design to build the hardware. Through long nights and weekends, our team developed a strong partnership and respect for one another. Grit is different from stubbornness; sometimes I needed the grit to admit when someone else’s idea was more viable than my own, and we experienced this multiple times throughout the project.
The SPOOK system garnered the interest of engineers around the world, so I felt that our final product needed to be both portable and user-friendly. To accommodate these elements, I advocated for the use of a $50 single-board computer to power our system. Senior engineers reacted with skepticism, but we moved forward with the compact design. As a result, additional single-board computer projects are now forecasted to save our company hundreds of thousands of dollars; one subsequent development received a Manufacturing Incentive Award. In late 201X, I’ll lead a company-wide innovation initiative focused on improving efficiency across all our manufacturing sites. SPOOK won Innovation Convention awards in 201X, and I’m currently in Hong Kong, leading our Chinese engineers in the development of a barcode reader system that will save the company $800,000. I wouldn’t have these opportunities if I hadn’t had the grit to push through problems during the development of the SPOOK system.
Grit has prepared me to embrace personal challenges which made me a more empathetic person. When I moved to South Carolina from Philadelphia, I didn’t feel comfortable at first: I am the first openly trans individual that many of my co-workers have known. I’ve focused on building relationships with colleagues, mostly middle-aged men from the South, who were initially shocked by my identity, and I’m proud to call many of them my friends today. Working in our old-school manufacturing environment has given me a toughness that is only developed through spending days crouched under manufacturing tools while overheating in a full-body suit; I needed a thick skin, a sense of humor, and respect for the job at hand.
Grit is also tied to ethical leadership, so I try to emulate the best practices of company leaders I admire. As manager of our team, this means that I own our failures, but the entire team owns our successes. I’ve seen that when individuals know that they have their manager’s full support, they’re more innovative, motivated, and likely to come forward with potential issues, so I strive to foster an open and functional team dynamic. Due to the success of initiatives I’ve led at [company], I’ve accepted an early promotion to a supervisory role, and will manage 35 engineering technicians when I return to Greenville, SC.
Grit has enhanced every aspect of my life, and I’m a better person because of it. I’ve grown a lot at [company], and I know that I have a great deal to learn from Stanford’s offerings and from my Stanford peers.