[WoW] Ebon Netherscale

Another moment of note over the weekend: Mazumok got his first experience in a heroic instance.

A guildmate asked me for help--he was in a PUG for heroic Mana-Tombs, and they needed more DPS for the last boss. I wasn't sure that I could provide sufficient DPS with a resto-specced druid, so I brought Mazumok instead.

It was a somewhat tricky fight, but we handled it on the second try. I was working on keeping the Ethereal Beacons suppressed; I was taken by surprise when the boss died.

In addition to getting Maz's first Badge of Justice, Maz won the drop for the Primal Nether. This meant that Maz finally had the two Primal Nethers he needed to make his Ebon Netherscale Breastplate.

So I farmed for the materials over the weekend. Extensively. I made a typical Ralph error: I farmed so eagerly for the materials that by the time I made the breastplate late on Saturday night, I was too tired to really enjoy it.

But now I have a new breastplate. Woot. I should try to get Maz into even more heroic instances.

Intelligence vs. Persistence

I've had this article among my tabs for several days now:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raising-smart-kids

Many people assume that superior intelligence or ability is a key to success. But more than three decades of research shows that an overemphasis on intellect or talent—and the implication that such traits are innate and fixed—leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unmotivated to learn.
Teaching people to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages a focus on effort rather than on intelligence or talent, produces high achievers in school and in life.
Parents and teachers can engender a growth mind-set in children by praising them for their effort or persistence (rather than for their intelligence), by telling success stories that emphasize hard work and love of learning, and by teaching them about the brain as a learning machine.

I certainly was a prodigiously smart kid in school, and sailed through most of my classes. But I never really learned diligence and persistence, and I had some big troubles year after year on long-term projects that couldn't be handled by sheer smarts.

I remember my father telling me stories about how he wasn't the smartest kid at CalTech, but he held a solid B through dogged work when people who were used to sailing through high school with As floundered because they couldn't handle the new need for sustained work. I didn't hit that wall with most of my college education--I was able to skip class, suck down the textbook during Dead Week, and do well on the test with last-minute study. But it's been a continuing shame to that I've been trying to use brilliance to compensate for lack of diligence--especially when lack of diligence caused me to drop out of grad school.