It was really, intensely frustrating at times. I was almost certainly a bottom 10%, if not 5%, at Caltech. It inspired me and pushed me into moving into a different, non-typical field for the average Caltech student where I could still be the best among the cohort. From another, less charitable perspective, Caltech proved to me that I couldn't be a top--or possibly even a very good--engineer, so I just gave up rather than struggling to get better.
