This is the unfortunate truth, and it highly bothers me. I started college pretty terribly but had a few friends who excelled. They finished before me and when

This is the unfortunate truth, and it highly bothers me. I started college pretty terribly but had a few friends who excelled. They finished before me and when the situation got dire I simply emulated what they were doing and "magically" got on their same level. It was just a question of work, constant and focused work. Not to mention that the more I worked on the material the more I got interested in it (I did many other things but this reply is not an essay on academic excellence). After graduation I started reflecting on my experience and I soon realized that in my first years from an outsider's point of view I was indistinguishable from the mass of bored, passive students that crowded the classrooms every day, and yet I managed to escape the invisible prison and rose to the very top. Is what I did something that would have produced the same results if applied to the majority of the students I initially appeared so similar to? This is the question that haunts me. Do most people in a certain field remain in mediocrity because they are mediocre by nature? Or is it because deep down they aren't actually interested and driven but are too scared to admit it to themselves? Or is it because nobody has taught them the truth about hard work? Personally I believe (without much evidence) in the latter. I like to think that that silent majority of mediocre students truly wanted to graduate and would have done so with straight As if they faced the reality of the hard work they needed to do. I like to believe, perhaps too optimistically, that the bell curve of performance is not a statistical reality of the world but something that can be skewed to the right.