In a lot of high schools, it is possible for very bright kids to get As while doing nothing. If and only if this is the case, you should consider whether doing the work is worthwhile.
And note that if you intend to pursue any kind of more challenging studies (anything involving heavy math, for instance), you should probably get into the habit of doing the work even if you could get As by doing nothing. Otherwise there’s a high probability that you’ll suffer from the curse of the gifted:
When you were in college, did you ever meet bright kids who graduated
top of their class in high-school and then floundered freshman year
in college because they had never learned how to study? It’s a common
trap. A friend of mine calls it “the curse of the gifted”—a tendency
to lean on your native ability too much, because you’ve always been
rewarded for doing that and self-discipline would take actual work.
You are a brilliant implementor, more able than me and possibly (I say
this after consideration, and in all seriousness) the best one in the
Unix tradition since Ken Thompson himself. As a consequence, you
suffer the curse of the gifted programmer—you lean on your ability
so much that you’ve never learned to value certain kinds of coding
self-discipline and design craftsmanship that lesser mortals must
develop in order to handle the kind of problem complexity you eat for
breakfast. [...]
But you make some of your more senior colleagues nervous. See, we’ve
seen the curse of the gifted before. Some of us were those kids in
college. We learned the hard way that the bill always comes due --
the scale of the problems always increases to a point where your
native talent alone doesn’t cut it any more. The smarter you are, the
longer it takes to hit that crunch point—and the harder the
adjustment when you finally do. And we can see that you, poor damn
genius that you are, are cruising for a serious bruising.
As Linux grows, there will come a time when your raw talent is not
enough. What happens then will depend on how much discipline about
coding and release practices and fastidiousness about clean design you
developed before you needed it, back when your talent was sufficient
to let you get away without.
It’s very easy to fall into the trap of always getting As done with zero effort, and then becoming incapable of actually putting in effort when you get to the stage where simply being bright isn’t enough anymore. I have suffered from that problem myself, which is one of the reasons I’ve decided not to pursue math-heavy paths. I’m simply not cut out for putting in that much work in those fields, but things might have been different if I had slacked off less earlier.
It cost me quite a bit of time and effort to overcome this. First two years of uni basically wasted for that purpose (did do a lot of cool stuff though, some of it even useful).
I may relapse in the future, so readers please don’t take this as a success story, until I’m back here with a PhD or a successful start up. :)
And note that if you intend to pursue any kind of more challenging studies (anything involving heavy math, for instance), you should probably get into the habit of doing the work even if you could get As by doing nothing. Otherwise there’s a high probability that you’ll suffer from the curse of the gifted:
It’s very easy to fall into the trap of always getting As done with zero effort, and then becoming incapable of actually putting in effort when you get to the stage where simply being bright isn’t enough anymore. I have suffered from that problem myself, which is one of the reasons I’ve decided not to pursue math-heavy paths. I’m simply not cut out for putting in that much work in those fields, but things might have been different if I had slacked off less earlier.
It cost me quite a bit of time and effort to overcome this. First two years of uni basically wasted for that purpose (did do a lot of cool stuff though, some of it even useful).
I may relapse in the future, so readers please don’t take this as a success story, until I’m back here with a PhD or a successful start up. :)