I was noticing yesterday while I was in class that every class I've ever been in has had a relatively similar makeup of different kinds of people. 
Person A:  This person argues and questions everything and, though smart, slows the class down with his desire to completely understand every detail about everything.  This person puts forth a tremendous amount of work and gets a great though stressful return. 

Person B:  This person inherently knows and understands everything about everything and can calmly and conclusively shoot Person A down.  This person does little to no work and consistently succeeds with perfection. 

Person C:  This person thinks he knows what he's talking about, so he uses big words incorrectly and confusingly explains himself to the professor and the rest of the class.  In the absence of knowing how to answer this person (or where to start), everyone in the class just moves on, reaffirming this person's high opinion of himself. 

Person D:  This person has trouble understanding anything about anything and periodically asks unrelated, meaningless questions that are poorly phrased, improperly received, and incorrectly answered.  This person puts forth a tremendous amount of work and gets awful grades.  This person later becomes a manager and makes boatloads of money. 

Person E.  This person is sort of like Person B, except that he associates knowledge with weakness/uncoolness, so he doesn't apply himself and ends up getting bad grades.  If he put forth even half the amount of work as Person A, he'd do as well as Person B. 

Person F:  Me.  This person wants to punch Person A, despises Person B, can't stand listening to Person C, feels bad for Person D, shakes his finger at Person E, and generally just tries to get by.  This person believes that the best way to do well in school is by learning as little as possible. 
I've also noticed that professors are amazing people.  Especially engineering professors.  Engineers by nature are antisocial geeks who put pride in their knowledge and strive to do better than others.  That's why it seems weird to me that engineers can become teachers.  It just seems so monotonous and unrewarding.  Here's this person who spent a decade studying a very specific subject, earning various degrees and honors along the way, only to wind up in a classroom in front of a bunch of thankless, self-righteous, grade-mongerers.  I guess I just can't imagine putting a ton of work into something for the sole purpose of self-continuation.  There, I said it.  But I'm also amazed at their stamina.  These people talk about dry, boring subjects for hours on end, day after day, year after year.  Nothing changes in the way Heat Transfer or Fluid Mechanics works.  That was all settled a hundred years ago.  So I find it amazing that these people can seem interested in a subject and be ready to answer questions (from Person A and Person D) for 2.5 hours every Tuesday night.  I must applaud them. #education