A special breed

I just got an email from a professor notifying the class that the study guide for our next exam has been posted. Two to three minutes after receiving that email, I got another email from a student in the class notifying everyone that she had posted the study guide on GoogleDocs so we could have an ongoing online collaborative study session for the exam. Within 120 seconds, this student had outperformed every other student in the class. This student can now smirk at all of us because she was the first one to take the initiative and post the study guide. What a peach.

She's not alone. In other classes, scattered across the campus, a few choice students are doing the same thing--putting everyone else to utter shame.

HOW ARE THESE PEOPLE BORN?

Seriously, in every single one of my classes, there's that one kid who has an answer to every question, has read all of the material twice before coming to class, and already has the next three assignments completed ahead of time. There's always that one kid who has made comparative charts and tables of last class's lecture, color-coded flow charts connecting information from the entire semester, and an entire binder full of supplementary articles that he/she printed off independent of the professor's requirements for the course. And, inevitably, that one kid will set the curve for the exam and get the top grade in the class. That one kid will get a 4.0 and graduate with honors and get a fab job where he/she will continue to outperform absolutely everyone.

There's always that one kid.

Here's the thing, though--the one thing that makes me feel glad that I am not that one kid:


Nobody likes that kid.