Once I understood what she did to get
top grades, it did surprise me, was
maybe "kind of lame".

But there was a 'reason' she did what
she did: There were some strong
influences from her family that anything
less than an A would be 'shameful'.

So, yes, might notice that in K-college
she didn't "outwardly show any flare".
Right. She wanted the As. They meant
a LOT to her. She knew that she didn't
really get any extra points for "flare".

But eventually I learned that away from
a course with a prof, credits, and grades,
really, out of the view of anyone
powerful, influential, and potentially
critical, she had plenty of 'flare',
really was just brilliant. E.g.,
computing wasn't her field at all.
But at one point she wanted to do
some computing, in of all things
artificial intelligence. Well, I
was on a team of three that had
designed and developed an AI language. So I
gave her a one hour lecture covering
everything from how to use the
computer, file system, text editor, and
scripting language to our AI language.

Two weeks later she had a good, first program
running. I looked at it, explained
some of the 'theme' of how that AI
approach was intended to work, and let
her try again. In two more weeks she
had one of the nicest AI programs our
group ever saw. Just brilliant.
We had some really bright computer
science grad students in
our group; in computer science,
she was brighter. Astounding.

There is much more to human performance
in school, research, and a job than meets
the eye: In front of powerful,
influential, potentially critical
people, she was just terrified to
appear less than Little Miss Perfect
in the sense she got from her family.
In our home, in front of just herself
and me, she was free to show 'flair'
and be brilliant.

If you sense that the "lame" part
might not be so good in some
respects, you are correct. I spent
a lot of time around high end
academics and saw a lot of people
with spectacular grade point
averages, some of whom maybe never
failed to dot an 'i' since before
kindergarten. Commonly these people
were from very bright up to brilliant,
but it seemed that their grade point
averages were from various reasons
and not just brilliance. Some of those various
reasons were, in the end, not so good.

But if want to make the As my wife made, then
what she did worked, and not much else does.

There was a time in high school plane
geometry where apparently I did something
like you did: I was totally in love with
the subject, ate the exercises in the book
like popcorn, by the hand full. The teacher
was the most offensive person I've ever
met in a classroom, so I refused to appear
to do her assigned homework and mostly
slept in class. Each day she assigned
three not very difficult exercises. What
I did was all the non-trivial exercises
then turn to the back of the book for the
more difficult supplementary exercises
and do all of those. I never once failed
to do a non-trivial exercise during the whole
course. To save time, I didn't write
out all the proofs but usually did small versions
just in my head, in the margin of the book,
on scraps of paper, etc. For the few
exercises that actually took some effort,
say, two hours, I'd write out a proof
carefully.

For one of the supplementary exercises,
I started on Friday afternoon and just
kept going and finally got it late Sunday
evening. Nice exercise! On Monday in
class, there was
one of her assigned exercises, easy,
with the same figure. So, after she
discussed the solution to that exercise,
for the first and last time I 'participated'
in the class and mentioned the exercise
in the back of the book with the same
figure. She was thrilled and had the
class turn to that exercise. Time
passed .... After about 20 minutes she
was getting frustrated and nasty, was
exhorting the class to "think", etc.
Since I didn't want to be accused of
ruining the class, I raised my hand
and said, "Why don't we ..." at which
time she angrily interrupted me
nearly shouting "You knew how to do
it all the time". Yes, I was 'guilty'
as charged! Of course I knew how to
do it. I knew how to do every non-trivial
exercise in the book. If I didn't
know how to do it, no way would I
ask her.

She never let me finish the solution!

I didn't know that the exercise would be
difficult for the teacher. I wasn't
even sure I was one of the best
students in the class. I guess she
wasn't working all the exercises!

Uh, apparently on the state test in
plane geometry I did well! Another
guy and I were 1-2 in the class.
We were also 1-2 in the school on the
Math SAT. The teacher who read me
my SAT scores had known me since the
sixth grade, looked at my Verbal
SAT, 538 (654 the second time I took
it) and said "Good". It wasn't good,
and I knew that. Then she looked at
my Math SAT, stopped, looked afraid,
and said, "There must be some mistake".
Yes, sweetheart, there was, and had been
for 12, long, painful years, you ditzy
bimbo. I was a good candidate for
the best math student in the school,
and the school never knew it (actually
apparently the principal did know;
apparently he looked at some of my
standardized test results -- but
the teachers did too much gossiping
among themselves).

So, yes, for that plane geometry
teacher, there was
a strong sense of 'competition' even
with the students. So, she didn't
want me to show any 'flair'. But
I demonstrated that my knowledge of
the subject was from my efforts in
learning and not from her efforts
in teaching. Of course this was
in part my reaction to all those
K-8 teachers who treated me with
contempt.

Contempt? Of course, my Ph.D. and
research were in mathematics: Well
my eighth grade arithmetic teacher
strongly advised me never to take
anymore math in school! Why? I
didn't do well on her tests. Why?
I understood the material quickly
but for the exercises, say, multiplying
two four digit numbers, had poor
accuracy. Why? Not from lack of
understanding. But at the time,
common for boys, my
'clerical accuracy' was not good;
my handwriting was awful which meant
that commonly I misread my intermediate
results; and no one explained to me that
I needed to be sure to work carefully
to write clearly, keep the vertical
columns lined up, and get correct results.
Finally a college physics prof told me
bluntly that I had to work carefully
enough to get correct numerical results
since a mistake could ruin a physics
career. From then on my accuracy was
from okay up to good enough.

Even
now I do not trust my clerical
accuracy. So for anything important,
I do it, let the results 'age' hopefully
for a few days, do it again independently,
and compare the results. Also I no longer
want to do anything like 'manual' arithmetic
or use a calculator where I have to copy
between the calculator and, say, paper.
Instead I essentially just program all
arithmetic. Otherwise I'm too prone
to simple mistakes.

But the contempt from those K-8 teachers
did damage. One graduate course
started off with some axiomatic
set theory. The prof gave a pop quiz.
One of his questions was tricky,
and I saw how to do it only at the
end of the time. So I wrote quickly
and used a symbol without defining
it but used it with the meaning I'd
seen in an earlier NSF course in
set theory. So, later the prof
called me for a 'conference'. He
was convinced that I was a poor
student. I explained the symbol and
said that I thought that its meaning
was standard in axiomatic set theory,
and he then saw that my solution
was one step shorter than his and
good. Then he relented. But that
contempt from him was too close
to what I'd gotten in K-8; I
concluded that there would be no
way to please him; gave up; and
never went back to that class. He
wasn't teaching the course very well
anyway, and later I got a just
brilliant presentation of that material,
best course of any kind I ever took
in school.

These examples can show students some
of the challenges in school: Not all
the challenges are obvious on the
surface. Your remark about 'discipline'
is correct: Even if a teacher dumps
on a student unfairly sometimes, the
student needs to continue on and not
just walk away. The course is not
all just about competition for 'flair'
but also has some material should
get through, flair or not.

But, for a Ph.D., one way for a grad
student to 'polish their halo' is
to do some publishable, original
research, independently or nearly so,
early on, i.e., show some 'flair' for
research. Why? The main difficulty
for a Ph.D. is just the research, and
showing that can do research, especially
independently, can do
wonders at getting the faculty on the
side of the student.

We've now solved all the problems in
higher education!