Udacity Lifelong Learners Go For Learning Gold. Challenge Yourself Today!
The champion spirit knows no boundaries. It doesn’t live only on the field, the ice, the slopes. It takes root in the hearts of people from all walks of life. Wherever there is someone pursuing their personal best, taking on the biggest challenges, and striving to achieve more, that’s where you’ll find the champion spirit. From Architects to Zoologists, the champion spirit informs the work of every single person who strives to excel.
The XXIII Olympic Winter Games are behind us now, but the spirit remains. We take from those events a deepened sense of what it means to succeed, to fail, and to succeed again. We take from the personal stories that emerged a richer sense of the sacrifices made, and the hard work put in.
As we return to our desks today, we return to our own challenges and opportunities. We face our work, and we seek to find within ourselves the champion spirit. As lifelong learners, it is the classroom that is our arena. And just as skaters take the ice with their teams beside them—in spirit if not in skates!—we enter the classroom with the support of our teams.
Each of us brings with us a different personal team to the classroom. For some, it is our parents who continue to motivate, inspire, and support us. For others, it is a spouse, or friends, or even co-workers. For many, it’s a combination of all the above. We all have unique support systems, and they support us to stay our courses and pursue our goals. We are each accountable to these teams in different ways.
What we all share, however, is Udacity. As lifelong learners in Udacity classrooms, we all have Udacity on our team. Dedicated instructors teaching us cutting-edge skills. Project reviewers delivering expert feedback. Mentors seeing us through every challenge. This is our team. These are our coaches, our trainers.
And so we train. We take quizzes, watch videos, build projects, submit code. We create campaigns, design experiments, analyze results. Everything we do is supported, scrutinized, reviewed, assessed. No Udacity learner learns alone.
And yet …
And yet, when the legs are shaking with fatigue, and the mind is too tired to concentrate, it is the skater alone who must try again. The elusive triple axel awaits. One more time around the rink. One more attempt, one more fall. The team is there to give support, to provide feedback on what the skater did and didn’t do right. There is video to watch, analysis to absorb, exhortations to embrace. But in the end, the skater must return to the ice alone, to try again.
Udacity lifelong learners know this, just as Olympic athletes know this. Success is all about resilience, persistence, and grit. These traits don’t just happen. You are not born with them. They are earned.
Olympic figure skater Mirai Nagasu knows this. She failed to earn an individual medal at the 2018 Winter Olympics. She also became the first American woman in Olympics history to land a triple axel. Setback, success.
“Failure is inevitable, and it’s the people that keep trying who become successful.” —Mirai Nagasu
We built the entire learning model at Udacity based on a single premise. There is no “if.” There is only “when.”
We enjoyed a rather remarkable milestone recently. A Udacity student made the one millionth project submission. This is incredible in and of itself, but what was especially beautiful about it, was that this was the student’s third attempt. And they succeeded. Setback, success. This is the champion spirit at work, alive in the heart of a Udacity lifelong learner.
The XXIII Olympic Winter Games may now be consigned to the history books, but the champion spirit continues on, infusing our work in the classroom, on the job, and in every facet of our lives. Today is a new day, another chance to challenge ourselves. To go for learning gold.
And don’t forget that more amazing and inspirational stories are right around the corner—the PyeongChang 2018 Paralympic Winter Games start on March 9th!
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Go for learning gold. Challenge yourself today. Enroll in a Nanodegree program, and launch the learning journey of your life!
