[GSlob]

All wrong: it is possible to ace an otherwise difficult university without becoming recognizable by a librarian or even without knowing where the library is. But it takes creative approach. May one Carl Friedrich Gauss serve as an example: in his grade school years a pedantic teacher told the class to add all whole numbers from 1 to, IIRC, 100. And while everybody else was busily applying themselves with truly Teutonic persistence, young Carl (aged below 10 at the time) derived a simple combinatorial formula X=N x (N+1)/2 and came up with a correct answer within a minute. A fair warning: it is very difficult to be a Gauss.

[Question_Assumptions]

In high school, I had the top scaled grade across three physics classes without ever studying. One student asked me where I got an equation to solve a problem, I told him (truthfully) that I made it up (and was correct). Alas, my aptitude did not carry me though college physics where I couldn't visualize all of the problems. I can't do physics that's taught as a math equation that hides the underlying mechanism of what's going on (e.g., electronics).

That said, I've done pretty well on aptitude and interpersonal skills despite being a pretty poor student with low self-control. It's all a matter of finding work that values fast thinking, improvisation, and flexibility than slow and steady performance and, to be honest, decent interpersonal skills probably trumps both aptitude and self-control in the business world.

[lepton]

X = (1+100)*(100/2) = 101*50 = 5050 was obvious enough to me when my teacher gave it to us in 5th grade to stump us. If it took Gauss as long as 15 seconds, it was only to visualize it in the first place.

[ReignOfError]

A fair warning: it is very difficult to be a Gauss.

And there's always the threat someone will press a button on his monitor and you'll disappear.