Obsession

But there was a 'reason' she did what she did: There were some strong influences from her family that anything less than an A would be 'shameful'.

So, yes, might notice that in K-college she didn't "outwardly show any flare". Right. She wanted the As. They meant a LOT to her. She knew that she didn't really get any extra points for "flare".

But eventually I learned that away from a course with a prof, credits, and grades, really, out of the view of anyone powerful, influential, and potentially critical, she had plenty of 'flare', really was just brilliant. E.g., computing wasn't her field at all. But at one point she wanted to do some computing, in of all things artificial intelligence. Well, I was on a team of three that had designed and developed an AI language. So I gave her a one hour lecture covering everything from how to use the computer, file system, text editor, and scripting language to our AI language.

Two weeks later she had a good, first program running. I looked at it, explained some of the 'theme' of how that AI approach was intended to work, and let her try again. In two more weeks she had one of the nicest AI programs our group ever saw. Just brilliant. We had some really bright computer science grad students in our group; in computer science, she was brighter. Astounding.

There is much more to human performance in school, research, and a job than meets the eye: In front of powerful, influential, potentially critical people, she was just terrified to appear less than Little Miss Perfect in the sense she got from her family. In our home, in front of just herself and me, she was free to show 'flair' and be brilliant.

If you sense that the "lame" part might not be so good in some respects, you are correct. I spent a lot of time around high end academics and saw a lot of people with spectacular grade point averages, some of whom maybe never failed to dot an 'i' since before kindergarten. Commonly these people were from very bright up to brilliant, but it seemed that their grade point averages were from various reasons and not just brilliance. Some of those various reasons were, in the end, not so good.

But if want to make the As my wife made, then what she did worked, and not much else does.

There was a time in high school plane geometry where apparently I did something like you did: I was totally in love with the subject, ate the exercises in the book like popcorn, by the hand full. The teacher was the most offensive person I've ever met in a classroom, so I refused to appear to do her assigned homework and mostly slept in class. Each day she assigned three not very difficult exercises. What I did was all the non-trivial exercises then turn to the back of the book for the more difficult supplementary exercises and do all of those. I never once failed to do a non-trivial exercise during the whole course. To save time, I didn't write out all the proofs but usually did small versions just in my head, in the margin of the book, on scraps of paper, etc. For the few exercises that actually took some effort, say, two hours, I'd write out a proof carefully.

For one of the supplementary exercises, I started on Friday afternoon and just kept going and finally got it late Sunday evening. Nice exercise! On Monday in class, there was one of her assigned exercises, easy, with the same figure. So, after she discussed the solution to that exercise, for the first and last time I 'participated' in the class and mentioned the exercise in the back of the book with the same figure. She was thrilled and had the class turn to that exercise. Time passed .... After about 20 minutes she was getting frustrated and nasty, was exhorting the class to "think", etc. Since I didn't want to be accused of ruining the class, I raised my hand and said, "Why don't we ..." at which time she angrily interrupted me nearly shouting "You knew how to do it all the time". Yes, I was 'guilty' as charged! Of course I knew how to do it. I knew how to do every non-trivial exercise in the book. If I didn't know how to do it, no way would I ask her.

She never let me finish the solution!

I didn't know that the exercise would be difficult for the teacher. I wasn't even sure I was one of the best students in the class. I guess she wasn't working all the exercises!

Uh, apparently on the state test in plane geometry I did well! Another guy and I were 1-2 in the class. We were also 1-2 in the school on the Math SAT. The teacher who read me my SAT scores had known me since the sixth grade, looked at my Verbal SAT, 538 (654 the second time I took it) and said "Good". It wasn't good, and I knew that. Then she looked at my Math SAT, stopped, looked afraid, and said, "There must be some mistake". Yes, sweetheart, there was, and had been for 12, long, painful years, you ditzy bimbo. I was a good candidate for the best math student in the school, and the school never knew it (actually apparently the principal did know; apparently he looked at some of my standardized test results -- but the teachers did too much gossiping among themselves).

So, yes, for that plane geometry teacher, there was a strong sense of 'competition' even with the students. So, she didn't want me to show any 'flair'. But I demonstrated that my knowledge of the subject was from my efforts in learning and not from her efforts in teaching. Of course this was in part my reaction to all those K-8 teachers who treated me with contempt.

Contempt? Of course, my Ph.D. and research were in mathematics: Well my eighth grade arithmetic teacher strongly advised me never to take anymore math in school! Why? I didn't do well on her tests. Why? I understood the material quickly but for the exercises, say, multiplying two four digit numbers, had poor accuracy. Why? Not from lack of understanding. But at the time, common for boys, my 'clerical accuracy' was not good; my handwriting was awful which meant that commonly I misread my intermediate results; and no one explained to me that I needed to be sure to work carefully to write clearly, keep the vertical columns lined up, and get correct results. Finally a college physics prof told me bluntly that I had to work carefully enough to get correct numerical results since a mistake could ruin a physics career. From then on my accuracy was from okay up to good enough.

Even now I do not trust my clerical accuracy. So for anything important, I do it, let the results 'age' hopefully for a few days, do it again independently, and compare the results. Also I no longer want to do anything like 'manual' arithmetic or use a calculator where I have to copy between the calculator and, say, paper. Instead I essentially just program all arithmetic. Otherwise I'm too prone to simple mistakes.

But the contempt from those K-8 teachers did damage. One graduate course started off with some axiomatic set theory. The prof gave a pop quiz. One of his questions was tricky, and I saw how to do it only at the end of the time. So I wrote quickly and used a symbol without defining it but used it with the meaning I'd seen in an earlier NSF course in set theory. So, later the prof called me for a 'conference'. He was convinced that I was a poor student. I explained the symbol and said that I thought that its meaning was standard in axiomatic set theory, and he then saw that my solution was one step shorter than his and good. Then he relented. But that contempt from him was too close to what I'd gotten in K-8; I concluded that there would be no way to please him; gave up; and never went back to that class. He wasn't teaching the course very well anyway, and later I got a just brilliant presentation of that material, best course of any kind I ever took in school.

These examples can show students some of the challenges in school: Not all the challenges are obvious on the surface. Your remark about 'discipline' is correct: Even if a teacher dumps on a student unfairly sometimes, the student needs to continue on and not just walk away. The course is not all just about competition for 'flair' but also has some material should get through, flair or not.

But, for a Ph.D., one way for a grad student to 'polish their halo' is to do some publishable, original research, independently or nearly so, early on, i.e., show some 'flair' for research. Why? The main difficulty for a Ph.D. is just the research, and showing that can do research, especially independently, can do wonders at getting the faculty on the side of the student.

We've now solved all the problems in higher education!

With all of those traits, it's easy. If you miss one, you might be able to slog through. And if you miss two, it will be extremely difficult.

And our educational systems really don't encourage anything but memorization, despite ample PR otherwise, so there's a selection bias by the time you hit college level courses.

The classroom model is not for everyone.

Dropouts can and are just as successful, more so, I think, the earlier they realize they are not like everyone else.

Like you, I am not like OP.

Everything I learned that is valuable to me on a daily basis was not learned in the classroom. Classrooms are really boring and who wants to listen to a talking head?

I have achieved much so far in my life, but I wish I would have known earlier that direct experience was a much better way for me.

School's out. Forever.