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Well it is surprizing to me to find people chiming in that did not do hw. In my experience when i did not do homework at harvard, i flunked out. when i went back to utah a decade later i did all homework and went to all lectures, and worked as hard as possible. i was the presidential scholar, and upon graduation, in a tight job market, i applied about 5-10 places and got 4 jobs.
it may be that the people saying they did not study much are just smarter than me, certainly hawking. but if you look back you see several of us seem to agree we did little work in college, but more in grad school. I am just saying it was a mistake not to do more work in college too. My fellow students who are famous mathematicians now, like Cheeger, Bloch, Mather, Hochster, Zimmer...apparently worked hard also in colllege.
If you want to be all you can be, as the army slogan goes, I cannot imagine not working as hard as possible, as i recommend here. there is a big difference between just having a PhD, and solving problems that top people are interested in and trying to solve. Obviously there is also a big advantage to starting to work hard at 18 or 20 as opposed to waiting till you are 30.
it may be that the people saying they did not study much are just smarter than me, certainly hawking. but if you look back you see several of us seem to agree we did little work in college, but more in grad school. I am just saying it was a mistake not to do more work in college too. My fellow students who are famous mathematicians now, like Cheeger, Bloch, Mather, Hochster, Zimmer...apparently worked hard also in colllege.
If you want to be all you can be, as the army slogan goes, I cannot imagine not working as hard as possible, as i recommend here. there is a big difference between just having a PhD, and solving problems that top people are interested in and trying to solve. Obviously there is also a big advantage to starting to work hard at 18 or 20 as opposed to waiting till you are 30.
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