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LearnStorm Growth Mindset: Khan Academy's humanities content creator on social belonging

Listen to Kim Kutz Elliott, Khan Academy's humanities content creator talk about her struggles in college to find social belonging. She talks about how she eventually got over the "imposter syndrome" and became successful socially. Kim's story is part of the Growth Mindset Curriculum available with LearnStorm, a back-to-school program aimed at helping students start the school year strong. The growth mindset curriculum helps students take their own life experiences apply their learnings in the face of frustration, making mistakes and learning new things. For more information, visit https://learnstorm.khanacademy.org/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=desc.

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Video transcript

- I'm Kim Kutz Elliott, and I work on humanities content at Khan Academy. So I thought about things that were really difficult for me, and one thing that was hard for me was class discussion, because I went to this history class and I swear that every other person in that class had like read every history book ever. And I don't know how they did it, but I was convinced that I was an imposter, I did not belong in this class. (laughs) Everyone else was just completely brilliant, and you know, they would sit around and discuss these ideas and they were kind of vicious, you know, say like oh, this text book is wrong. This person has a terrible argument. And I'd be sitting there thinking I haven't even read a text book, like that's a pretty big deal. (laughs) So I was just, I think I was just terrified to open my mouth in this class and kinda reveal to everyone that I didn't belong there. And so I went to a teacher who was a mentor to me and I said, everybody's so mean. I'm not this mean, and he said to me, you know, "It's okay to be the person who says, "what can we learn from this, "and it's okay to be the person who wants to take something "positive away from this class."