Younger me would have paradoxically been in both the diligent and alienated category. The older I get, the more I realize that the openly rambunctious kids I went to school with probably had the right idea all along. They were experiencing an intuitive and deeply human reaction to what is essentially a wasteful cargo-culting process where grades and other such surrogate activities are mistaken for actions that directly contribute to life. It's a classic case of confusing ease of control and predictability for actual value. To some extent there is real value in the work, in that its get your foot through the door which in turns gets your foot in a series of potentially more pleasant doors down the the line. But the process is so utterly inefficient in terms of the effort and opportunity cost expended compared to what a job actually requires in the real world.

I hope I'm not coming across as bitter, because I am in fact quite optimistic. We have the technological means to spread education far more easily. Bright students are faced with a more competitive world but also have the tools to make progress on just about anything. With ML, it might even be possible to offer personalized courses and the attention that every individual kid or young adult might need.