It was the last day of the final examination in a large eastern university. A group of engineering seniors gathered, discussing the exam due to begin in a few ________. On their faces was confidence. This was their last exam before they went on to ________ and jobs.

The coming exam, they knew, would be a(n) ________ task. The professor had said they could bring ________ books or notes they wanted, requesting only that they did not ________ each other during the test.

Three hours had passed ________ the professor began to collect the papers. The students no longer looked confident. On their faces was a frightened expression. The professor looked at the ________ faces before him, and then asked, “How many completed all five questions?” ________ a hand was raised.

“How many answered four?” Still no hands.

“Three? Two?” The students moved restlessly in their seats. “One, then? Certainly somebody finished ________.” But the class remained silent.

The professor put down the papers. “That is exactly what I ________,” he said. “I just want to impress upon you that, ________ you have completed four years of engineering, there are still many things about the ________ you don’t know. These questions you couldn’t answer are relatively ________ in everyday practice.” Then smiling, he added, “You will all ________ this course, but remember — even though you are now college graduates, your education has just ________.”

One of my major life-turning points happened during my exchange study in Finland. At the University of Economics in Prague where I studied it was extremely _________ to get on an Erasmus exchange trip abroad since the demand was _________. Everyone wanted to go!

Regardless, I decided to sign up early for my last semester, just to see what the process was like to be better prepared for _________ again in a year. I did make it through all the three rounds and _________ got a spot at a University in Turku, Finland! I was _________. The success brought its own _________, but once you set your eyes on the goal, nothing can stop you.

And I had the time of my life in Finland. I met the most amazing people, traveled a ton, partied a lot, and _________ with friends from all over the world. _________ I was one of the few people there who really needed to pass all the courses and additionally write the papers, I _________ to run on an impossible sleep schedule of four hours per night. But I __________ it! My study in Finland opened up my __________, too.

After the exchange study, I __________ my life in Finland. This adventure led me to choose a life of __________ made up of remote work and plenty of travelling. I couldn’t have asked for a better __________. And it gave me one of my favorite __________ that I can now share with others.

Let’s step down from the celestial realm of Mozart and Darwin and come back to earth to see how mindsets create achievement in real life. It’s funny, but seeing one student blossom under the growth mindset has a greater impact on me than all the stories about Mozarts and Darwins. Maybe because it’s more about you and me—about what’s happened to us and why we are where we are now. And about children and their _______ .

Back on earth, we measured students’ mindsets as they made the _______ to junior high school: Did they believe their intelligence was a _______ trait or something they could develop? Then we followed them for the next two years.

The transition to junior high is a time of great _______ for many students. The work gets much harder, the grading policies toughen up, the teaching becomes less _______ . And all this happens while students are _______ their new adolescent bodies and roles. Grades suffer, but not everyone’s grades suffer _______ .

Now in our study, only the students with the fixed mindset showed the _______ . They showed an immediate drop-off in grades, and slowly but surely did worse and worse over the two years. The students with the _______ mindset showed an increase in their grades over the two years.

When the two groups had entered junior high, their past records were ________ . In the more benign environment of grade school, they’d earned the same grades and achievement test scores. Only when they hit the challenge of junior high did they begin to ________ .

Here is how students with the fixed mindset explained their poor grades. Many maligned(诋毁)their abilities: “I’m the stupidest.” And many ________ someone else: “Because the teacher is on crack.” These interesting analyses of the problem hardly provide a road map to future success.

With the threat of failure looming(隐现), students with the growth mindset instead mobilized their resources for learning. They told us that they, too, sometimes felt ________ , but their response was to dig in and do what it takes. They were like George Dantzig.

George Dantzig was a graduate student in math at Berkeley. One day, as usual, he rushed in late to his math class and quickly ________ the two homework problems from the blackboard. When he later went to do them, he found them very difficult, and it took him several days of hard work to ________ them open and solve them. They turned out not to be the homework problems at all. They were famous maths problems that had never been solved.