This troper is dropping his History class as he sucks at it and is currently sitting on a C. Unfortunately, curriculum rules say he has to finish the course, which means waiting till after the semester exam until he drops so he doesn't take anything seriously in it. Thus, essay to write with a two-week preparation period = everyone studying frantically but he. He got 14/25, with some of the hardest studiers only getting 15/25. Hilarity ensued.

This troper experienced this all the way through high school and a considerable amount of college. Spend two weeks researching, rewriting, and revising a paper? B-. Throw it together the night before it's due? A+ and extra credit for such thorough work.

This troper has found the same. Actually puting thought and effort into your work ruins it. Yay for well-developed intuition for academic pursuits!

This troper got a sincere compliment from a professor for her "good participation" and "attention to detail in the readings" in class discussion, when this troper has played online Solitare through the past three weeks of class, and hasn't done the reading since the first day. However, this troper was told to "take this class more seriously" and "come prepared" for a class in which she carefully does the homework and readings, and takes detailed notes.

A general rule for this troper: the less time I put into a paper, the better I do on it. I once wrote a paper which I shat out in a quarter of an hour, accused everyone in the school of being a moron, and had basically no conclusion, and got an A. A paper I wrote the year earlier, which I spent two weeks checking and rechecking every night? a C-. I think I might have the gift of working better under a deadline, possibly because the more I think of it, the more I criticise it and want to change it.

This troper is putting themselves on this list. The less time I have to do something the better I do. Most of my greatest marks came from [[strike:plagiarism]] intensive research and citation the night before it was due.

This troper adds himself to the list. It's gotten to the point where I'm no longer capable of doing research ahead of time even if I ''wanted'' to.

This troper also falls into this category. Every paper I've ever written has been done the night before (unless it's a second draft), and I've never gotten lower than a high B (from a really tough professor who never gives out A's, ever). Like the above tropers, I seem to have the ability to pump out awesome projects under a deadline, but flounder helplessly if I try to start ahead of time. The ability to bullshit pretty much anything when given 40 minutes and a piece of paper helps.

Of course, I still can't hold a candle to a friend of mine in high school. He would literally start his papers in the school library twenty minutes before they were due, usually at 7:30am (when he'd gone to bed at 3:00am), and still managed to pass all of his classes with A's and B's. I'm constantly astounded.

This troper is in this boat. All throughout high school I developed terrible, terrible work habits because I'd start an essay as little as 90 minutes before it was due, finish and print it off just as the bell was ringing, and get a 95% on it. I sorta hoped that once I got into university, this would no longer work, and I'd finally be forced to develop the good work habits I've always wanted. So far, the As keep on coming. Same applies to studying. Spend 90 minutes studying, end up with the second highest mark (out of 200 students). I actually feel really horrible when someone tells me they spent 30 hours writing an essay, days studying or whatever, and asks my advice on how to do well. And I feel like an asshole when I tell them how little work I did.

Somewhat counter intuitively, as a teacher I've found that students are more alert and learn more the more you let them do and the less you lecture. So spending sleepless nights making presentations only puts them to sleep, but a well designed activity (providing them with clear goals, telling them what to hand in, and how they'll be graded) that takes at most an hour to design got better results ''and'' kept me sleeping well and them from sleeping in class. All I do in class is make suggestions and make sure their working. It's almost like getting paid to do nothing! Well, except for the grading. Yech.

Christ, I wish I'd had you as a teacher in high school. Apparently back into 70's for some of my teachers, speaking in a monotone drawl was presented as a valid way to keep students attentions while at the same time smothering them with presentation after presentation. It never got my attention...It only sent me straight to dreamland.

This troper once kept a garden in school for Ag class and set one up at home. The school one, with mandated watering, weeding, mulching etc? Didn't do so great. The one at home, which basically got watered whenever this troper's mother waved a hose over it? Still flourishing today, three years later.

This Troper never had to study word spellings for tests. Ever.

Taking it a step further, this troper never has to study for anything. His secret? PAY ATTENTION.

Haha, same. It gets old when your classmates start giving you dirty looks for never studying though... -__-;;;

Same here. Reading the textbooks helped considerably, as well.

This troper would like to point out that reading the textbooks qualifies as hard work. :P

This troper is a naturally good speller and has a wide vocabulary, so comprehension English exams are a breeze.

This troper is much the same for English. Sadly, it's not quite the same for some of my other classes.

Same for this troper on vocab tests; he'll make an A no matter what, and only got a B when a test was poorly made.

This troper also never has to study for just about anything. Whenever I was told to study I was actually reading comic books most of the time.

This troper is extremely proud of her photographic memory. :D

I used to meticulously write papers to the best of my ability in school, until I realized that if I put absolutely no emotional stake in the outcome of the paper, they turned out amazing--because I was trying new things and letting my writer's voice come out. Also, I've never had to study for a test in my life.

This troper has to bust her ass studying, reading, etc. just to get an A in her classes; her friends on the other hand just sit in class with bored looks on their faces and don't study and pull the ''exact same averages''. Also, this troper recalls studying for an entire week for a Chemistry test, only to get a ''C''; the following test she just studied the night before and pulled an ''A''...''plus''!

This troper spends entire weekends studying for history tests only to get B minuses. The one time he missed a class was a day when there was a test, so when he had to make it up, he didn't study for it. Needless to say, a 99% was the score he received. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like reverse psychology.

This happens quite a bit. One time, I was in a college class that was taught from another campus by a video conference (each campus only had about a handful of students, but combined, we made a sizable class that one teacher could easily cover.) On my campus, there were three students. When preparing for a test, another student and I studied diligently for over a week, and neither of us made above a "B." The third student stumbled in late, drunk, and finished before either of us, and received an "A." When we discussed this later on, we realized that the professor wasn't reading our papers and merely grading them based on length, so we followed his advice on the next test (minus the alcohol,) simply fluffed out our papers to make them longer, got better grades, and learned an important lesson that made our collegiate lives much easier.

I whiz through tests in half the time it akes everyone else to.And that's because i only remembered about 5 minutes beforehand that there WAS a test.

For this troper is was "if you take decent notes during lectures and chapter reviews, it'll stick and you'll never need them."

This Trope, during classes, would throw something together last minute. I got really good grades, but frustrated everything out of my parents. Also could memorize all the notes in class and never study for a test, for an A/A+. Again, frustrating for my parents.

Huh. I can't ''remember'' putting this here. It seems I also neglected to mention that my parents "advice" was basically a magic "make your project suck" button.

This Troper solved a maths coursework the class was given 3 weeks to work on simply by staring at the problem for about 20 minutes and writing down the solution. I then spent the next 3 weeks goofing off or just adding examples to the work. Did come back to bite me somewhat later as I was unable to prove exactly how I solved the problem and thus merely got an A. Then repeated this in my Economics GCSE by getting an A* grade with a D average for the coursework and no study whatsoever. Still not sure how I pulled that one off.

This Troper worked her ''ass'' off in ballet class (sometimes to the point of collapsing while practicing privately), only to be told that she couldn't do it as a living because she wasn't the right body type - despite having a well-received solo at the end of the year.

The body type thing I can attest to. One of my friends had to leave ballet class (what she really liked) because she had the wrong body type that was very bad for ballet.

This troper had a project to do for English: put together a soundtrack for a theoretical film of ''The Catcher in the Rye'' with 5 songs and provide the lyrics (a description of the music for instrumentals) and a paragraph explaining your choice with quotes from the novel to explain why you made the choices. This troper threw the whole thing together in less than an hour the night before it was due, including two instrumentals ("Kansas Storm" and "Electric Tears" by {{Buckethead}}) and made a 100%.

This troper's teachers seems to like her essays better when she gives up and starts writing vague sentences that only mildly pertain to the topic at hand.

This troper hasn't studied for a test since the sixth grade. This includes his GED tests.

This troper has found the same thing with her: she'll study hard for the first few weeks of uni, and then stuff around mainly playing games on the computer-usually Call of Duty-and surfing the net. Only when the exam is a week away, will she actually kind of study, and then when it's staring her in the face, she'll really study! Works with assignments as well: I have never started an assignment earlier than two weeks before the due date, EVER. Even if it is a 2000 word essay. I slapped together one such 2000 word essay (which, by the way, was an evil one) in about a week and it burped back with an A-. For my History class on WW1, I had to do an assignment at the eleventh hour, staying up till 1am, desperately finding three British and three New Zealand artists apiece. I fully expected a low mark. Well guess what-it came back as a B+ IIRC. Now THAT'S putting the "pro" in "procrastination"!

A whole week for only 2,000 words? That's called "Midnight already? Time to start the 7-10 page essay due tomorrow/technically today" with me.

All of this troper's best work has been done in the three hours before the piece of work is due. The prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully.

This troper agrees. 2000 words isn't exactly large. That's what we literature majors call 'Respond to last night's reading', and it's due every class.

This troper didn't study at all for his high school biology final. He then proceeded to set the curve. And, to clarify, previously, I'd maintained a B minus/C plus average in the class.

This troper, while in high school had a pop quiz on the Canterbury Tales, which he barely skimmed through. Not only did I get 87% on said pop quiz, ''I was the ONLY ONE who passed!''

This troper is the extreme example of this, much to my dad's frustration. In fact, I passed my Earth Science final with an A and the class with a B, and I slept through the entire second semester. Just recently, I got a 47 out of 55 on a AP US History test, the best score out of all three AP classes, and I didn't even read the chapter. Booyah.

This troper is a slow learner, so is pretty used to this trope. And that calculator can totally do math better than me ;_;

Subverted for this troper who has all but given up on Pre-Calculus for this reason,he has found that he always gets credit for doing the homework even if it means going to the back of the textbook for answers,and as for tests he tried studying once and still got an F,he still gets F's but he puts studying time into something that he has a chance at. - terlwyth

This Troper is on the wrong end of this. In order to pick up some extra money, he's been teaching Firearms safety and operation at a local gun range part time. He has ten years of experience, and is rated with many pistol calibers, revolver calibers, and even a few rifle calibers. He has one student who is only two weeks in training, and is an absolute prodigy with firearms. This girl can, within a few moments of holding the gun for the first time and hearing about the specifications, fire it with astounding accuracy, up to an including a Barrett .50-caliber M82A1 Heavy Sniper Rifle at its Maximum Effective Range after about fifteen minutes working with the weapon. This Troper knows ''professional police sharpshooters'' who can't do that. Alternately, she may actually have a secret military sharpshooter background and may be screwing with me.

Does she have some sort of glowy amulet thing by any chance ?

This troper barely studies for his SAT (no specialized book, no taking courses in SAT preparations, only look at math problems from PSAT and no English problems at all), and got a good enough score to enter one of the top 3 universities in Thailand, dunno how is that possible. Also, for some reason, he occasionally plays piano better without practicing (only works sometime, and he have to know the part in the head already).

This troper only studied once when he was sick for the ACTs. And yet he did well enough to get into first-choice university and had practically sent the application and Essay in within the final week. However, he ''did'' have a mother who had attended said university in the past ''and'' had a sister who was going at the time, and I ''think'' hearing somewhere that that kind of stuff helps. (But not as much as having an uncle who donated money to the science wing.)

This (Dutch) Troper had learned English from VideoGames and the internet long before English class ever got a chance to do it, and as a result, I generally spent my English classes doing entirely nothing at all while getting ridiculously good grades. I didn't even bother preparing for my English Final Exam and still did better on it than I did on any other exam.

All this is completely blown out of the water by said Troper's old classmate at Life Consideration (it's an actual class. Seriously) who, after playing his GBA below his desk and doing entirely nothing else in said class got the highest mark of the class for effort. The teacher may well have been the most HorribleJudgeOfCharacter ever.

This Troper is terrible about doing homework, projects, papers, etc. The problem is that no matter how much work I put into it weeks/days before it's due, I always do better the day of/the middle of the class i's due in. It's gotten to points where we had to verbally annotate a book (FastFoodNation) for a final exam, and had one notecard to write on. I proceeded to write down all relevant notes as the person before me was finishing their speech.

This troper demonstrated both sides of the trope in grade 11; the one class in which she paid attention and put in tons of effort, she pulled a 66, while in her other classes she was slacking and acing everything.

This Troper has had a nasty run-in with Geometry (luckily, I passed with a B average) and is now grappling with Calculus. It doesn't help that the latter has an oddball teacher. No matter how much time and effort I investing into studying, I rarely seem to be able to manage better than a low B, and that's the ''best case scenario''. Keep in mind that I'm 3rd in my class with a 3.8 GPA. Even my class's resident TeenGenius (who has an average of a ''99.8'') says that this class might be a struggle. How this Troper is managing to keep a B in that class is a mystery to him. Then again, my semester exam was just yesterday... In the best (and most outrageous) example of this trope, one girl in our class waits until literally ''five minutes'' before class starts to do her assignments and ''never'' takes notes or studies, yet manages to be passing the class with ''flying colors''. Ding dang it!

Unfortunately for this troper, the trope works perfectly with the girl she sits next to in class. I study my ass off all the damn time, perfectly clean notes, daily three-hour revision, whatever. Alright, it does pay off, as her average this trimester was 88.89%. But what about this other girl? She's known to sleep two hours a day tops, barely eats anything but fruit, spends the whole class writing stupid crap about how the world is a huge game of chess ot something, hasn't touched any of the schoolbooks ''literally'' -- I have never ever seen her take them out of her locker -- and her average was 97.78%. That's 100% in every fucking subject but P.E. where she got 80%. YES I AM JEALOUS.

This troper never studied anything for his Algorithms/Programming class and got a 89% (to his credit, he already knew some C programming when he began the course). But for Physics and Linear Algebra? Studied a lot and... 50% and 35% respectively (the last one was failed).

Throughout most of school I was able to pass tests without so much as opening the book. Now that I'm in college things are different.

At sixth-form, doing A-levels, this troper's best friend studied for ''nine hours a day'' the week before an exam. He got a C. This troper's total revision for that subject amounted to thumbing through his face-meltingly disorganised notes for all of ten minutes. While story-writing and MSN-ing. He got an A. This was true throughout all of school and college. At university, he did actually try and did study, but nowhere near as hard as anybody else and still came out with a good degree. He also never got stressed, as he would do a hundred words ''a week'' to get his essays in a week early. So, he did ''work'', he just didn't work ''hard''. ;-)

This troper knows people who spent ''all of Thanksgiving Week'' studying for a badly-placed exam. (How's the ''Monday after a week off from school'' sound?) Guess who got scores as low as 20%? Of course, keep in mind another reason was the professor - he put together a study guide and had it released the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Week. Problem? The test included ''absolutely NOTHING'' from the Study Guide, so even those people who thought "...we had a test today?" failed. :|

This Troper has always paid attention in class, has always done their homework (And done other things like lead a few clubs) and has only slacked off a few times due to mental breakdowns YET the truant, in my math class, who isn't even there half the time, scores higher on tests than me and is somehow on a friendly basis with the teacher than I am even though we both talk to her daily.

This troper likes to treat verbal presentations as an improvised comedy routine, focusing more on making the class laugh than actually educating them on my topic. (At one point during a presentation on Zeus in my literary genres class, my partner and I humorously portrayed Chronos eating his children.) A lot of the time I may have a few note scribbled down and glance down for my talking points, or I might have a whole essay with me and plop it on my desk and promptly ignore it to just do it off the top of my head. Another time was during a grade-wide religious retreat (Catholic high school kind of make this mandatory). We were split into groups to think of several different things for...I honestly don't really remember, but I remember this little bit: #QUOTE#'''Me:''' ''(with great emphasis)'' I dropped my [=PENcil=]!! #QUOTE#'''Person:''' HERE!! I will get it for YOU! (picks it up and hands it to me) #QUOTE#'''Me:''' WHY ''THANK'' YOU!! That was very ''HELPFUL'' of you!! #QUOTE#'''Person:''' No problem at all! I LOVE HELPING PEOPLE!! #QUOTE#'''Me:''' HELPING: It's GOOD!

And yes, I tend to do essays better at the last minute anyway. Ironically, I HATE having to do something at the last minute. But, of course, I'm a chronic procrastinator, so whenever I try to get a jump on things (like right now I'm trying to do homework so I don't have to do it over the weekend) I get Distracted By The Internet.

Spend a week of intensive studying for a test? C-. Hastily review basic ideas in the passing period? A+. Read every word in the novel and thoroughly proofread the essay to make sure it's on prompt and logical? C-. Don't even bother reading the damn thing and throwing some barely relevant essay together based on a 5 sentence long summary in an internet forum? A+.

This Troper remembers a time where he had to do a Geometry project, but forgot to do it on time, so he used lunch and nutrition (both of which combined last 1 hour) to somehow finish it. He got an A- for his poorly done project. His friend, on the other hand, put a lot of effort into it got a B.

This troper manages to break the curve for a semester grade of a 102 in math class by simply paying brief attention in class then sleeping and/or working on chemistry, and her homework is simply the answers from the back of the book, but her chemistry grade is still meager despite her extensive notes and 1-2 hours a night of studying.

heh This troper is this to an asinine extent: for starters this troper is convinced that he somehow has the ability to auto-pass any form of standardized testing and have the fastest time, like for anyone who lives in Ohio, and has taken or will be taking the Ohio Graduation Exam in 10th grade( yeah a test that determines whether or not you can graduate high school in tenth grade) this troper has done 2 sections of that test in under a half an hour and was the first one done on all the others, and got some of the highest scores on that test. another example is the GED. didn't study for it and on the first day did all the sections assigned that day in under 1 houre 45 minutes, on the second day did all the assigned parts in LESS THAN AN HOUR, scared the crap outta my mom, when i called her that day an hour after she dropped me off, she thought i was gonna fail.... turns out that i had passed 4/5 sections by a wide margin and skimmed by on writing, mostly due to the fact this troper has crappy handwriting. this troper has also passed his algebra I class by only doing the tests and passing those, according to a friend that sat up front and talked to the teacher told me that the teacher said that if i could pass the tests without doing any of the assignments that it proved that i knew the material and that i should pass his class

In high school, This Troper put on a master clinic of this trope. In an advanced math class freshmen year, I hardly did any work for the last month, didn't study, and was not in any way prepared for the final. Despite this, I got the highest grade in the class and finished the year with a solid A. In another example that's first subverted and played straight, my sophomore geometry class was a total disaster. I screwed around, didn't study, and didn't do homework, but this time I barely passed the first semester with a 60.1% when the minimum passing was a 60.0%. The second semester I learned my lesson, studied, paid attention, and worked hard. My reward for all this effort? Passing with a 60.5% for the second semester. So I went back to the method of just studying/working last minute and had smooth sailing for the rest of high school and much of college.

This troper read a 200 pages long version of "The prince and the pauper" and most of the class read a 100 pages long version, with pictures!, that was sold at my school. I got a 7 (or C) and the rest got A's... Next year I decided to help a friend in a test of "Marianela", he didn't read the book at all and thanks to me, he got an 8/B thanks to me, the only questions he failed where the "explain in your own words..."

For my Composition II class, we were supposed to write a forty page, four chapter book over the course of the semester. Every chapter I wrote was written up the night before deadline (and in some cases, the morning of the deadline), I switch topics in the third chapter, and had about ten sources instead of the required fifteen to twenty, with the final draft coming to just over thirty pages. And I walked out of that class with a 90% on the project.

I tend to benefit from this one. I always write a paper the night before it's due, with one exception: A five-page (IIRC) paper with detailed instructions which the teacher gave us a month, in-class, to do. I spent most of the class time fooling around online, then slapped the paper together in the last week and got a B, without even finishing the book I was supposed to be writing about. Actually, that entire class fits this trope for me: got a perfect score on the poetry analyses I spent only half the class time given (and no outside time) on, did well on the writings I half-assed... Subverted a few times when Senioritis kicked in and {{TheBGrade I got A-s instead of As}} because I really stopped caring. Another stellar example appears in middle school, when I got transferred into a history class right when they were having a test, after not having taken anything remotely connected for a semester and never having heard of the era dealt with (The Gilded Age). I got a C, better than some people who'd actually been there for the material. Barely touched the giant ACT prep books I had been given and got a 35, which put me third in the class of 300ish and ahead of many who had taken an ACT prep class.

Chem II was the hardest class my high school offered. Most people compared it to a college level course, and as a current college student, I can attest that it was harder than many of the classes I've taken so far. My friends and I would spend hours studying formulas and chemical nomenclature, only to receive C's on our tests (if we were lucky). Once, instead of studying for a big test, we decided to watch IronMan, which had just come out on DVD and we were crazy excited to see again. Our grades on the test the next day? B+.

I never study. Or take notes. For anything. Most homework gets done the night before it's due. And I get A+ to B+ grades. Chalk it up to a good memory.

Once while at a friend's house, this troper's sister picked up a book to read. When she finished the book, the friend asked "Was that a good book? Great! Can you summarize it for me? I have a book report on it due tomorrow." The friend got an A on her report.

This troper's aunt. 50 hours a week...promotion given to someone who only worked part-time and had been at the job only ''two years''. (Aunt had been there for a good ''eight''.) The excuse "You don't do enough for the company" was thrown at her, despite how it was always ''her'' doing extra, covering for sick employees, helping review business plans, reviewing resumes in her spare time. Is it any wonder she quit?

This troper had it play out straight for him and then was brutally subverted. I have a very good memory and a real gift for pattern recognition. This allowed me to skate through elementary an high school at the top of my class. In university this was no longer enough and without a good study ethic, I crashed badly, repeated a year and was glad to actually get my degree.

This troper does this sort of thing regularly--hard work results mostly in stress, so it actually pretty much ensures I will do horribly on an exam. I'm actually better off making sure I have a pretty good idea what I need to know for the test, and then do something fun (like watch '''all''' of Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne) the night or two before. Then there's the physics midterm I took while too out of it from the day before's emergency root canal to understand English; I got the second-highest grade in the class. This was...confusing, especially since the exams in that class were ''always'' word problems. I still wonder what was wrong with my classmates, that they couldn't '''all''' do better than somebody who really has no business even turning up for the exam in the first place. (The only hard work I was doing ''then'' was dragging myself to the exam despite a ''very'' close brush with meningitis. I do '''not''' think that counts!)

This troper is powers and/or is powered by this trope.

I wouldn't say this trope is true for me most of the time, but there was one time in college when it was. I had a test coming up in a class everyone said was hard, and which I could admit was challenging. The test was the midterm. I didn't study for it (at all) because I got the dates mixed up and thought I had more time. I made educated guesses about the answers and got the highest grade in the class. I did study for the final exam, but I didn't get the highest grade, even though I still did well.

I proooobably do less work than I should anyway, but before my AS English language exam last year, I revised and revised and revised, and got a C. I still revised a bit before this year's, but considerably less, and got an A! Though I do understand and remember the topic a lot better this year, but it's really annoying because now I'll have to retake the AS exam if I want an A overall.

This tropers essays are always written as late as possible, much like the other tropers on this page. One notable example of this is where I had to writen an essay we had a while, like a week or two, to work on. He crapped it together in 45 minutes the night before and get an A on it, with comments such as "What unique thought" in places where I just made up explanations. His brother is the exact same way, and we don't often, if ever, think about it before hand. We fondly call this "bullshitting" our essays.

I go to one of those work colleges where they pay your tuition if you work on-campus for a certain amount of hours per week. The main goal of each incoming freshman is to spend as little time as possible at the cafeteria work-station, the landscaping (read: mowing and picking up sticks) workstation, or the tourist trap restaurant workstation we have. Each of these is a living hell compared to the other stations on-campus. When I first enrolled, I spent two semesters at the hellhole known as the cafeteria. Your clothes smelled, you had to work weekends (all the while I was holding another job to pay for the tuition they don't tell you about having to be paid for when they give you a tour), I took extra shifts, and I never slacked off or slept in dark rooms around the building to get out of work (did I mention we never get paid for this crap). That hard work kept me there another semester while the lazy kids were shifted off to easy stations. The next year, I'm at a management position at a workstation and I spend most of my time goofing off or doing homework during work hours....I just got nominated for a prestigious work award at the college....hard work u my butt.

This troper was definitely born under this trope. Ignore assignments and sleep through math and get D's and F's for reports then an A+ on all tests/exams? Yeah, the teacher didn't like that. Didn't even read any of the books assigned to us in English (cept LotR, but I'd read that 10 years before it was assigned) and aced every test on those. All sciences offered in my school? Mmm... For Science! Granted I heavily enjoyed those classes, but I certainly didn't try in them. SATs? 1409 (when it was out of 1600 still) and slept through the majority of the test and didn't even realize there was a book for studying them. Spanish at the Defense Language Institute? Tried everything I could, still didn't pass the Defense Language Proficiency Test.

This troper is quite heavy about this, and it's pretty interesting how:

When it comes to tests, this troper doesn't really study at all. His memory is really good, and he can actually recall a lot of things very quickly. He also has a habit of knowing what words mean before most of his classmates do, due to his memories of hearing them in video games, even if the word was mentioned once in passing.

In video games, this troper almost need play a game once in order to outshine all his friends. In DragonBallZ Burst Limit? Plays for a good minute, then can completely floor his friend, who happens to have played this game for months. Same with PRetty much any other game put into his hands.

Finally, in fighting. This troper doesn't work out to much, only had a few days worth of karate, and is pretty lazy. However, he can pretty much out-fight nearly anoyone his age, and often proves himself stronger then his peers.

This troper is a language teacher, and finds herself preferring tutoring one-on-one or in groups of not more than four because of how distressed some students will become over their classmates picking something up effortlessly while they themselves struggle with it. One student said she had a friend who spoke five languages fluently; how was this possible when the student herself couldn't even nail down a second one? The troper explained that it depends on how young the languages were learned, and how strictly they were taught, and how complete the immersion in the learning environment was, but, she was forced to admit, some people are just gifted at languages while others are not.

A subversion: this troper took a complaint to her high school on the grounds that she took the highest mark in Francais Langue 12, her accent and pronunciation were flawless (one invigilator at an oral exam actually mistook her for a francophone), she got top marks on the provincial exam, her error rate in written papers was below 1%, and she still did not win the school French award. Her teacher explained that while she was very, very good in French, it was due entirely to a combination of her early education and a natural ability with the language. The student who won the award was not as talented as she was, but he was nearly as good and had worked about ten times as hard to get there, and so deserved the award more. The troper is embarrassed to admit she still sulked.

This troper really can't figure out how she managed to get a first class degree, since she basically went to university to avoid having to get a proper job and did nothing much for three years.

As a college freshman, Edgy had to work a certain amount of volunteer hours for a theater class he had to take. He did 2 out of 20 hours and passed with a B. Others completed all 20 hours and got lower grades.