Yes, I went to grad school in math. The first test was a pop quiz in real analysis and was about the little axiomatic set theory the prof had started the course with.

When the prof handed back the papers, he'd given me a zero. At the end of class, he asked that I stay. We went over my test paper: I had used little omega as the first infinite ordinal, essentially the same as the set of natural numbers. In an NSF course in axiomatic set theory the previous summer, that notation was standard. I'd thought of my proof, that is, my solution on the test, only at the last moment so just used little omega without defining it. When I gave the prof the definition, he saw that my solution was correct and, indeed, one step shorter than his. So, I got credit on the test.

Then I asked the prof why he had wanted to see me, and he smiled and said that he no longer did.

It was a class of 20+ students, and I doubt that all the other students got a good proof. So, why was the prof picking on me?????

He was regarded as a bright prof. In later years, he did have some fame.
So much for such a bright math prof. I smelled I was being dumped on. I didn't know that prof at all.

His lectures were not very clear. The book he had selected was just in typing which is awful for the math of real analysis -- he could have used, say, Royden. And he'd just tried to dump on me for no good reason. Also, I was correct and he hadn't known that -- my meaning for little omega is and was standard.

At times I'd been dumped on in grades 1-12. I did well on standardized tests in math and physics, and that saved me. I was well out of patience being dumped on so walked out of the course and never saw that prof again.

In high school plane geometry the teacher believed that I refused to do any homework. Well, I didn't bother with her homework assignments -- they were too easy. Instead in the back of the book there were lots of more difficult exercises, and I made sure I worked 100% of those, never missed even one. One of those took me the weekend, and when I mentioned it in class on Monday, my first and last class participation, 20 minutes later the teacher was close to screaming exhorting the class to "think". Not wanting to be accused of ruining the class, as I started to give the steps to a solution, the teacher cut me off and screamed "You knew how to do it all along." Guilty as charged! Gee, she was not interested in getting the solution from me!

I've come to suspect: Students with some flair for originality and creativity can look different, not the same as the image of a good student -- nose to the grindstone, ear to the ground, shoulder to the wheel, and from that position dot all the i's and cross all the t's -- and less good than desired instead of better.

The other two courses they had me in were close to what I'd already studied carefully in ugrad school. One of these two was from Kelley, General Topology that I had lectured from to a prof.

I did well at my ugrad teaching, started violin, met my wife, and got a Ph.D. in applied math later at another university.

There, too, at times I did work comparable with that of the brilliant profs.

Net, I'm not so impressed by the super brains of so called brilliant profs.

Or I believe in the standard, "Everyone puts pants on one leg at a time."

More generally, my experience is, given the basic context of data and background, a lot of people can work through and find the immediate consequences.