Failure is also a pretty good indicator that you're trying to do things. That's not to say there aren't success stories where someone tried something, got lucky

Failure is also a pretty good indicator that you're trying to do things. That's not to say there aren't success stories where someone tried something, got lucky, and it went off from the very start. I just mean that, in my own personal experience, I wasted a lot of time waiting for something to happen. Once you actually start trying out ideas and trying to do something, you often also start encountering failures - big and small- and I try not to take it as a bad thing, but rather as a lesson in whatever it was I was doing and also as a personal reminder that "hey, I had an idea and I ran with it and worked at it. I tried to do something, let's try again or work harder at a different idea." I really identify with your top student comment, thanks for sharing.