Similar not same situation, but different outcome. Had done hobby programming in high school, read a bunch of books, took a junior college course on C.
Got to undergrad. Followed the speed limit, took intro to programming course. 450 person class, 1000 person wait-list. 75% of the class did not pass. Only attended two lectures, hand written programming finals. Never lost a point.
It wasn't until the 3rd year programming languages class that we wrote minimal lisp interpreters in scheme and did crazy stuff in prolog that I had that rewiring sensation.
Not trying to brag, just putting this here for others reading to say that not every intro to programming course speed limit is worth it.
The first language we started with was SML and for a good couple of months I just laughed at this stupid language with its silly and unnecessary limitations. It wasn't until we had to implement a parser in it, something I coincidentally had struggled with on my own, that I started to realize that I was dealing with a different paradigm, and a very powerful one at that.
I was less cocky after that.