I was in a writing class, and I saw someone writing about "how to ace a STEM class at UCSB".
Wow okay. Someone trying to teach ME a lesson on how to do STEM?
The first bullet point was about "how to take good notes", and the subsequent bullet points are just more cliches about how to do well in classes.
I remember seeing folks in data structure and algorithm class mulling so hard at the lecture slides hoping to pass the final exam, but the moment they get hit with a new recursion problem, they are out.
Those who did super well in the class didn't study much at all, because they all do ICPC or USACO competitive programming. The median score still did fine, but it's nowhere near the ICPC kids. Those who did well in data structure and algorithm class did well not because they mulled over the lecture slides and took the best notes; they did well because they already spent years training against competition level problems, and school work just becomes easy cake.
Running as fast as you can on foot doesn't let you get past a continent. You need to fly.
Going to all the lectures, doing every homework perfectly, and asking all the questions in your CS class doesn't make you a great programmer. You have to do you so much on your own passion to be good, and once you are flying, classes are just boring side quests to get by.
Making $100k a year or even $1 million a year won't make you a billionaire. Nailing every Github PR or getting every promotion right won't make you the next CEO or not even VP. Running to the moon doesn't work, nor does driving or flying. Driving is a lot faster than running, flying is a lot faster than driving, but it's still not fast enough. It kind of requires a rocket and some escape velocity and luck to get to the moon.
But how many of us will ever have the opportunity to steer a rocket?
And rockets explode too, way more often than planes and cars. So should we still ever step into a rocket?
Frankly, nothing is wrong with running, or driving, or flying. Being happy on earth is enough. But when do we draw the line between greed and ambition? And on the other hand, what happens when we realized that we might have to drive forever and never be able to get with a plane, and definitely not a rocket to reach the moon?
Or, how do we know a rocket would never come across us?
Who knows.