1/2) You wouldn't think it, but one of my best advising assets as a professor now is the fact that I went to college to run track and before I was emotionally or intellectually mature enough to have any sense of academic purpose, so skipped class and my grades sucked at first.

2/2) That means I can see eye to eye with struggling students, many of whom are also in college simply because they're supposed to go to college, and still figuring out their intellectual motivations and goals. And I can tell them it gets better.