“I Don’t Know, Probably Made My Usual C”

He is often described as being a very average student, even bad at math while the opposite is of course true.

You just can't revolution physics the way he did if you suck at math.

I don't see skills related to getting good grades vs skills related to innovation as being at odds with each other.

I think the big answer here is that there is something that causes both not caring about school and succeeding in "innovation" and business. It's called "wealth" and is the most effective predictor of any kind of success.

Americans are always looking for get rich quick schemes. We love to hear the story, "working hard is for suckers, just have a good idea one time and you'll be a billionaire" -- it lets us blame the poor for being poor (the cornerstone of American economic culture) because they obviously just aren't smart enough to come up with a good idea. We like to say "getting As is for suckers, you don't need it" because we want to feel better than those nerds in school who wasted their energy and time trying hard.

> This silent consensus had informed me, both at the lyé and at the university, that one shouldn't bother worrying about what was really meant when using a term like "volume", which was "obviously self-evident", "generally known", "unproblematic", etc. I'd gone over their heads, almost as a matter of course, even as Lesbesgue himself had, several decades before, gone over their heads. It is in this gesture of "going beyond", to be something in oneself rather than the pawn of a consensus, the refusal to stay within a rigid circle that others have drawn around one - it is in this solitary act that one finds true creativity. All others things follow as a matter of course.

-- Alexandre Grothendieck, "The Life of a Mathematician - Reflections and Bearing Witness" (1986)

> Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

-- C. S. Lewis

Or it's self-validation that struggling in school doesn't doom them to a life defined by mediocrity.

Yet there are good reasons for exaggerating addiction potential to young children. Taboos are a coarse but effective social mechanism, and maintaining them often requires lying. Moreover, it's far easier and cheaper (especially given paucity of our scientific knowledge) than attempting to identify those particular children and adults most likely to become addicted.

Likewise, exaggerating the necessity for going to college is a cheap and easy way to guide expectations and channel effort. It's no surprise that upper-middle class children both graduate from college at higher rates _and_ generally have much better economic prospects--it's because of this very sort of unquestioned enculturation. Same phenomenon for Asian groups and other highly successful subgroups within society.

Reality will intrude soon enough. You don't need to tell a kid that Santa Claus doesn't exist; he'll figure it out. The only difference between that and other cultural lies is that when a kid figures out there's no Santa Claus he doesn't have a life-long chip on his shoulder or believe that he uniquely outsmarted the man. But when it comes to drugs, college, and now apparently homeownership, people seem to think they've attained some sort of unique, hard-won insight. And that cynicism is the only reasonable reaction.

I grew up super poor. Nobody ever told me to go to college. In fact, adults ridiculed "book learning" and school counselors exaggerated the unavoidable costs of college. But I did go to college--a private one with a generally elite upper-middle-class and upper-class student body. Both cultures lied to their children, but as an adult I can tell you which lie I'd have much preferred. And I can't say I'd have preferred the cold, hard truth, either. The truth is usually far more difficult, if not impossible, to articulate, especially to young people. Indeed, the truth usually requires context that just doesn't exist when you're talking about the distant future.