[toolz]

I think my story is a decent anecdote to support your statement. I spent half of college on academic probation with the main contribution to my terrible GPA being default failing status from skipping too much class.

I dropped out of school, got a job that was supposed to teach me something. It turned into answering the phone, but I used that time and title to land a Jr. software dev position and within just a few months I was being assigned solo projects and completing them ahead of schedule because I actually enjoyed learning the material outside of a structured environment.

I'm not a genius. I'd bet I'm not even that special. I think many people are just too conditioned to follow the wide beaten path, that even when they see a more appealing path they are scared to take it, and no one is actually encouraging them to take that path.

[dasil003]

I'm in the same boat. I struggled through college because I had to in order to keep my parents' health insurance (!), but my heart wasn't in it. Eventually I learned to do the minimum and coast through, but I had other things going on in my life that were so much more interesting and I just couldn't muster the motivation to "study".

Enter the real world, and guess what? Critical thinking skills and a tenacity to solve real problems are in tremendously short supply. You've got high-GPA graduates galore who can't tie their own bloody shoes. Motivation is everything.