The people who go on to become masters in their fields often start out with imperfect transcripts in school. In a study of world-class sculptors, it turned out that they were mostly average students. Two thirds graduated high school with Bs and Cs.8 A similar pattern emerged in a comparison of America’s most influential architects with peers who had fallen short of transforming the field. The great architects had rarely been great students:9 they typically finished college with a B average. Their perfectionistic colleagues had gleaming grades but went on to build far fewer glistening
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