Sometimes the unfortunate part of the education system is that you have to teach yourself a concept or skill. It's admirable that the individual mentioned was a

Sometimes the unfortunate part of the education system is that you have to teach yourself a concept or skill. It's admirable that the individual mentioned was a straight-A student, but its almost meaningless compared to the people who have been teaching themselves how to code, hack, tinker with hardware, etc, since they were a kid. I read Sean Parker's bio on Wikipedia sometime back and it explained his "autodidacticism". It got him far very early in his life so much that he didn't have to attend college. Granted not everyone has the kind of innate skill that some of these so called geniuses or prodigies do, but you can certainly learn a thing or two from them. As far as working in teams go, again, nothing is preventing you from gathering two or three of your good friends and building something together, no matter how useless the end product turns out to be in real life. This way, you are not restrained on your idea or your methodology in building, you learn from trial-and-error and build on your experience, and if the product does turn out to be something remotely useful then that is one more thing to write on your resume and talk about in your interviews. Work towards getting your degree and do well, but always work towards making yourself better; don't solely rely on coursework and professors, because that won't take you very far.