Yes, I think some people falsely learn early on that stumbling upon something they don't quite understand is a sign that they are failing. I sometimes even thi

Yes, I think some people falsely learn early on that stumbling upon something they don't quite understand is a sign that they are failing. I sometimes even think (though I'm not so sure) that having too good textbooks can be an impediment for above-average students as they have less to wrestle with and things are laid out and pre-disgested too much. I may be wrong though, because you can then just get to the next levels until you hit the wall. But I feel like anecdotally I got good value from deriving some basic things and reorganizing the somewhat badly presented materials in some of my classes. Later on I found very good American textbooks (although widely out of the reach of my wallet at the time), from MIT etc. which were crystal clear in some of the intuition that I had to sweat out for myself. Maybe I could have spent that energy at higher levels, though.