&quot;real skills&quot;: not sure what you mean by this. Later you say &quot;useful&quot; and &quot;different&quot;, is that the intended reading of &quot;real&quot;, or is it advice to ignore the poseurs?<p>&quot;make friendships with really smart people. So get out of the dorm room or the library and be social.&quot;<p>In my experience, those &quot;really smart people&quot; didn&#x27;t get that way by the abundant time spent not studying, so isn&#x27;t more likely that you will find the smart people studying? just a thought.