A500.1.5.RB – INTELLECTUAL PERSEVERANCE

           The Critical Thinking Community defines Intellectual Perseverance as “having a consciousness of the need to use intellectual insights and truths in spite of difficulties, obstacles, and frustrations; firm adherence to rational principles despite the irrational opposition of others; a sense of the need to struggle with confusion and unsettled questions over an extended period of time to achieve deeper understanding or insight.”  (http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/valuable-intellectual-traits/528)  

            Nathan L. King of Whitworth University, describes intellectual perseverance as a person-relative.  He said, “Intellectual perseverance is a matter of continuing in one’s intellectual projects for an appropriate amount of time, despite the threat of obstacles to the completion of these projects. This virtue is often exhibited in attempts to discover new truths, but it does not require this—attempts to articulate and apply old truths can exemplify perseverance. And perseverance does not require the completion of one’s intellectual projects. It does, however, require continued efforts to progress in the direction of completion.”  (Nathan L. King, Whitworth University, Perseverance as an Intellectual Virtue, http://guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/calhoun/socratic/King_PerseveranceasIntellectualVirtue.pdf)

                 Working full time and pursuing a master’s degree at the same time, will be challenging for me and husband.  Our schedule is quite complicated.  He works at night and I work in the morning.  When my husband gets home, I am already sleeping, very tired and exasperated from work.   My work load is on top of the roof right now.  I have been challenged to manage the employed physicians’ practices, develop policies and guidelines, and develop new employed physicians’ onboarding and new employee orientation program, just to name a few of my main responsibilities.  It is very obvious that for me to be successful in juggling work, studies and marriage, it is imperative that I aspire and consistently practice the virtue of intellectual perseverance.

            When I am faced with different types of obstacles, difficulties either at home or at work, and frustrations from not being able to focus 100% with school work, it is the time that I will need to be more determined to keep my pursuit of a successful study habits to overcome any deterrent that comes my way.  I have to believe that I will one day harvest the fruit of my labor as long as I stay focused, be more creative, and most specially, strive for a strong intellectual perseverance. 

            According to Rick Reis, A good leader is one who is motivated to ensure that everyone in his or her direct report or colleagues are safe from harm; he or she acts with conviction, delivers clear direction and is objective, fair and reasonable.  (http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/tomprof/posting.php?ID=1164)  My concept of a good leader is most likely in synced with Daniel Goleman, psychologist and author.  Goleman’s concept of a great leader is one who possesses emotional intelligence.  Emotional intelligence’s building blocks are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. 

A combination of the virtues of emotional intelligence and intellectual perseverance produce a great leader.  An individual who is in pursuit of truth and pure knowledge regardless if the road to that pursuit is formidable; and who has the ability to appropriately understand and respond to emotions, subduing pressure of the moment and has self-awareness how his or her words actions affect the people around him or her, is my ideal leader.

            Strong leaders have the ability to balance their actions with expectancy.  As Greg Githens say, “Action without reflection is impulsiveness.  Reflection without action is procrastination.”

References:

http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/valuable-intellectual-traits/528

Nathan L. King, Whitworth University, Perseverance as an Intellectual Virtue

Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2001). Critical thinking: Tools for taking charge of your learning and your life. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall

http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/tomprof/posting.php?ID=1164

Daniel Goleman, Co-Director of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations at Rutgers University