A lot of us at this age were brought up to believe we could be anything, do anything, achieve anything. The subtext of “pick one or two things and you may achieve modest success” was perhaps not sufficiently emphasised.

Add to this that the definition of “do well” has morphed from “be one of the better accomplished kids in your school” to be more like “be in the top 1% nationally” (or even globally) and there’s a serious impedance mismatch there.