To the kids with potential

Teachers always wrote - "Can do better with more effort" on my report card.

I was smart but not smart enough to match the truly brilliant ones. I was hard working but could not match the real work horses.

The truly elite I observed were the ones who were both work horses and naturally gifted.

I worked when I felt it was necessary and needed, I coasted when I knew I could afford to and still come out well.

Academia is a weird place. It fails a lot of students. Especially the ones in the middle like me - just enough potential to be brilliant but without the grit to cross the threshold to greatness.

Always caught in a dilemma — "I am good at this but should I choose to specialize here?" "I am not good at this but I am interested - should I allocate enough time to become good at it?"

That’s a difficult place to be in, you always feel like you underachieved because you had the potential but never tried.

Not to be yet another underachiever who blamed the system, but these are my mere reflections as an adult now. (I probably think I underachieved because of the very phenomenon I am describing.)

The repercussions of schooling and college are felt much later in life, that is why educational outcomes are so hard to measure, there is a delay of few decades before you can see if your experiment actually worked.