- I am always very lucky. Even if I put almost no effort in any kind of project it always comes out at least ok.

- My bachelor course was more or less a joke. The description of the single classes always sounded totally impressive but in the end most it was just rubbish and very easy.

- The master course I attended was a pure joke. If I had put any effort in it it would have been possible to pass it with almost perfect grade.

- I got my PhD position through pure luck and some personal connections.

- I am VERY good at pretending that I am actually working

So all in all I just perfected the art of procrastination. For example, when I was in the military service (not US), I more or less had to smuggle myself into a local military base for a few weeks because I was just to lazy to get a new id card.

So, how did you make it into the military service without learning to do unpleasant things?

Getting in the military was not the problem. Not getting drawn and doing something alternative was just too much effort for me at that time.

Somehow during the course of my university I've perfected my skills of presenting projects. I recently realized that I can get even a totally half-baked, barely working project to get a good grade, just by talking and spending an hour more on design than everybody else[1]. It wasn't until recently that my friend pointed out that I've learned to subconsciously depend on this and thus not working hard on anything.

Also, I find doing presentations, talking, doing design touches, or implementing weird things (like animations in MATLAB[2]) - pretty much anything except what I'm supposed to be doing at the moment - much more pleasant, much more fun. And I see that you can get far this way at university...

[1] - it's not about faking things, etc. - it's that people really underestimate how much depends on the general 'look and feel' of software, and the way it's presented.

[2] - did you know that MATLAB plot can give you stable 60FPS? ;)