Taking a higher course load was to enable me to actually learn things I wanted to. It was not about jumping hoops - didn't even finish my degree, because I had better things to do (a startup). I did finish it up years later, and that was about jumping hoops because the job market in the aftermath of the dot com crash in the UK where I moved to in 2000 meant having a degree was a lot more important.

It was also not about enjoying acing courses, but about needing to take courses that were compulsory for the programme and that you could not test out of. As I said, the option to skip most lectures felt like a reasonable middle group - if I'd run into problems with the group sessions, I could have easily gone back to the lectures at any time.