> willing to work hard at things that aren't immediately obviously essential but you do them anyway.
I view this as actually one of the biggest problems with current pedagogies and curriculum structures. They don't teach the why of things[1] and so students either are unmotivated because it seems meaningless to them, or the ones who follow blindly on faith, who think less for themselves, end up looking like the smart ones. But then maybe that's what some employers are looking for.
As Musk puts it, they fail to teach to the problem instead of the tools.[2]