I have a friend whose story was similar: she found grad school extremely hard because it was the first time she had to work at success. I probably would have f

I have a friend whose story was similar: she found grad school extremely hard because it was the first time she had to work at success. I probably would have fallen into the gifted category, had I not been homeschooled. I was pushed to excel in several different areas, some of which I was less gifted at than others, causing at least a nominal work ethic to be inculculated. Math was always relatively easy for me to conceptually understand: I thus nicely got a C in Calc 1 for understanding concepts and failing to really be able to grind out the work properly. Grades improved after that, let's just say. :) I also think that excessive success in the childhood years and early teens often skews with people's heads and they often don't do well later on. A lot of stories about gifted kids going mediocre. Terry Tao is an interesting counterexample to that, though. Anyway, I think the big takeaway is that Grits is a key character attribute for success.