Many in my Engineering School, long before AI, shared the previous years’ tests to study from, in my LXA fraternity. I never did, because I was working full-time while in school. I just didn’t have time to figure out the fraternity system.
At some point everyone needs to grow up though, and live in the real world where we are contributing seminal and creative thought, rather than jockeying for a grade.
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When Albert Einstein was a young physics student in Zurich, he often skipped his advanced math classes. He dismissed them as unnecessary theory with little practical use.
But his classmate and close friend, Marcel Grossmann, did attend—and took meticulous notes. When exam time came, Einstein borrowed them, and that was enough to scrape by.
Years later, while working on what would become the general theory of relativity, Einstein hit a wall. His physics was groundbreaking, describing curved space and time, but the math to express it was beyond him.
Once again, he turned to Grossmann. Now a mathematics professor, Grossmann introduced Einstein to tensor calculus and Riemannian geometry—the very tools Einstein needed. He even co-authored an early paper laying out the mathematical foundations of the theory.
Einstein later admitted that skipping those math classes had been a mistake. But thanks to Grossmann, he got a second chance. Their collaboration helped bring the world one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in history.
Behind every genius, there is often someone
