But you'll probably have to. Especially if get the wife-kids-house going. I took a difficult comp sci class and got a B. A year later I ran into someone who was also in the class. She got an A. I could remember everything and she could remember nothing. College is to many people a sort of intellectual bulemia. Cram and puke. Get a good grade, remember nothing and don't care. You can always teach yourself later if you need it. Pursue what you like - whether it's math, comp sci, physics, carpentry, or anything else. You can't go wrong. If you pursue money, degrees, academic status, etc. then you have a problem with your perception of yourself. You see yourself as needing something to improve your self-worth. Self-esteem problems. But the world generally doesn't see it that way. Tony Robbins is making a lot of money feeding the pathology of neurotics. I like people who just crave knowledge and suck up as much as they can. Usually they have some general focus areas but they go after everything they come across. They're usually seen as crazy in some way but of course everyone's nuts, it's just a matter of taste. My girlfriend and I have a house where she teaches piano and violin (Juilliard, doctorate, etc.), I'm off consulting where I'm at a large corporation doing database work but not kissing anyone's ass and at night I have a condo full of computers in some stage of design, build, modification and programming. I'm gonzo, batshit crazy but holding down a full-time job. I tell people my long-term goal is galactic domination (actually I've always wanted to be the sadistic warden of a women's prison) and that I'm doing research on time travel or building an anti-gravity device. I could say that I can calculate the distance to the nearest exact duplicate of earth and everything on it or I could engineer a rabbit with a jellyfish gene that makes it glow purple in the dark. But that's all been done before.