the expression “That really pushes my buttons”?
was not a particularly “good student”, I just got particularly good at being a student.  I got hooked on a lifetime love of optimizing systems when I realized that 89.5% rounds up to 90% rounds up to an A. That meant I could blow off one more homework assignment than if I didn’t understand decimal arithmetic. Math gives you superpowers. That’s also why I got started writing.  You see, after you set a multi-year expectation of always getting good grades, the praise mostly dries up.  Drats!  But if you particularly impress a teacher with your flair for writing, and she reads it out to the entire class, then you get to beam a little bit and you collect a story redeemable for an Attaboy at the dinner table.  So I got hooked on writing.  Roughly contemporaneously, I got introduced
I was not a particularly “good student”, I just got particularly good at being a student.  I got hooked on a lifetime love of optimizing systems when I realized that 89.5% rounds up to 90% rounds up to an A.
