Yeah, working a full-time job throughout high school didn't exactly maximize my potential. I had minimal time for much else, and it didn't exactly foster the be

Yeah, working a full-time job throughout high school didn't exactly maximize my potential. I had minimal time for much else, and it didn't exactly foster the best habits when I crammed 1st period homework into homeroom, hoped the 1st period teacher didn't call me out for doing second period homework in 1st period, and continuing that practice throughout the day trying to "just in time" my learning, as the article suggests. It wasn't all as bad as that, not all of the time, but that characterizes much of it. You know where & how I "escaped"? With dumb luck and public University scholarships & federal grants. The dumb luck was some quirk of genetics that put enough horsepower in my brain that I could get away with awful learning habits. So I learned fast enough that grades & test scores needed for scholarships & grants allowed me to significantly cut back on the low-skill job hours. Then during college I learned enough that I got a semi-skilled job during the end of my college years, and went on from there. I've done the research on populations of kids that come from these backgrounds vs. others, and success rates are shitty. Sure, when I dig into the qualitative side I usually see a bit of determination on the part of those who were successful but there's always a lot of dumb luck too. This genre of pontificating that amounts to "Anyone can do it if they just try hard enough!" completely ignores the fact that the ability to try is itself highly influenced by outside factors beyond an individual or family's control. Problems of this sort can't be solved merely by attempts to motivate the individuals, they have to be accompanied by environmental changes and interventions.