See, I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and I did quite well in school. I think a lot of it has to do with personality. I'm a bit of a perfectionist and an overachiever. I strove for A's in every class; if I was getting B's I took that as failing. The CS classes were easy, but I also had teachers who were good at keeping it interesting. I learned that I generally didn't need to bother with assigned reading, my jobs as TA and lab assistant meant I ended up helping everyone else with the coursework anyway, which was all the prep I needed. Since A's were guaranteed on almost all tests in CS, I would race other similarly cocky students to see who could finish fastest.<p>I went to a liberal arts school, so there were a lot of classes I had to take that were completely unrelated to my major. These were the worst and the least interesting to me in general, but I had enough free time from not having to study for my major that the extra work required to get by in those classes  (it takes a lot longer to study something you don't care about) wasn't a problem. I got 3 non-A classes: 1 for missing too many classes (always hated morning classes), 1 because the professor didn't understand basic math and <i>nobody</i> got an A, and 1 because I got the date of the final wrong, missing it by a week (yeah, that really hurt, my only C).<p>My girlfriend, OTOH, went to school for an engineering degree mostly because that was what her mom pushed her for; she didn't really know what she wanted to do. Her financial aid didn't cover room and board so she had to work nearly full time at Starbucks. She was a very hard worker and her managers loved her, but school often fell by the wayside, partly she didn't have enough free time to give it the attention it needed, and partly because there was a lot of family drama that was affecting her emotionally at the time. She now works at an engineering firm where they love her because she's a fast learner and incredibly hard working, but her GPA is low enough that she's not sure she could ever get into grad school.