Education mostly exists to prove that a given person has the requisite minimum amount of raw intelligence, conscientiousness, and willingness to conform to be a

Education mostly exists to prove that a given person has the requisite minimum amount of raw intelligence, conscientiousness, and willingness to conform to be a good fit for the sector one is aiming to go into. What a lot of people don't realize is that to a certain extent being strong in one of these characteristics can make up for weaknesses in the others. We all knew an effortless genius growing up who got all As no matter how late they stayed up or how often they just shrugged off studying for tests. But we know way more kids who got all As by being pretty smart, and then also putting in the work and mostly following their parent's advice. On a slightly sadder note, we also all know a lot of genius slackers who slacked off a bit too hard and didn't make much of themselves, at least at the time. But these people generally do much better later in life, though, and IMO they usually don't seem to kick themselves too much about the lost compounding returns to e.g. getting into FAANG at 20 instead of 30 because they were busy playing punk shows with their friends or something.