> 1. never miss a lecture, no matter what

As a student of a top-tier French Master's degree, I consulted with a teacher to deal with exhaustion and to ask for a class rescheduling for my case. Explaining my situation, the teacher looks at me and interjected:

—Waitwaitwait. You... you went to all lectures!?

And he was right. Rather than following the curriculum, I should have developed my taste for various engineering topics and only used the classes as entertainment.