[nottorp]

Funny you should say that ...

... reminds me of when after uni i was trying to write games with a group of friends and had to rush back to the differential equations lectures to understand what's involved in vehicle simulation.

Edit: Oh and speaking of motivation as a student, your reward for qualifying for any national olympiad used to be being treated like a priceless ancient vase by every other teacher except the one supervising your grinding.

Of course, if you're national level on one subject you're probably pretty good at the others too, but it helps if they don't require as much work of you.

So you can grind at something you like anyway (I made the national computer science olympiad the last two high school years) and get an easier time (and like a month off) for the other subjects.