Fuck Yoda.
I’ve spent a good chunk of the last week reading through Carol Dweck’s Mindset: The Psychology of Success. It’s an interesting book, presenting concepts that you’ve probably come across online in all manner of articles about praising effort instead of intelligence, or assuming character traits and intelligence are fixed rather than malleable. Mostly, though, I spent the book thinking about Yoda. You’re familiar with Yoda, right? Little green muppet guy from Star Wars with irregular sentence syntax? Owner of one of the most quotable lines from The Empire Strikes back. The one that goes: Do or do not. There is no try. Possibly one of the most iconic mentor figures in science fiction film, and beloved of nerd-types everywhere despite the prequels turning him into a pingpong ball? Well, here’s the thing: it’s really hard to read Dweck’s book and start figuring that, really, Yoda is a bit shit as a Jedi educator. The whole idea that you succeed or
