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<p>While I was apparently a more competitive kid and thus more motivated by competitions (I did great in the Spelling Bee and the Geography Bee!), the rest of this paragraph could have described me at about any time through age 14 or so.</p>
<p>I mean, for a smart kid at that age, schoolwork is boring as heck, trivial beyond belief. It’s nothing but a hoop to jump through. Why on earth <em>wouldn’t</em> such a kid rush through assignments, spending as little time as possible? And of course she will get irritated if you tell her to be more thorough. I’m sure she doesn’t understand why you care. And why would she care about besting her own records or those of her classmates, on something so (probably, in her mind) meaningless? There’s just no point at all in getting a 100 instead of a 98 on your 4th grade math homework.</p>
<p>(I’m sure this sounds cocky, but it was definitely how I felt when I was nine, and I don’t think it was an unreasonable feeling.)</p>
<p>Of course, the major plus to her developing a work ethic now is that she’ll have it when she actually gets to a point where work is challenging and interesting, or when the results matter, when she actually <em>needs</em> it. If this is actually a concern, she can develop work ethic the same way I did, through sports or the arts or other extracurricular activities, or all of the above. Sports were particularly good for this with me, because they didn’t come naturally at <em>all</em> and I had to work very hard to even be adequate at a very non-elite level.</p>
<p>It worked okay. It got me through MIT (which I did find challenging - VERY challenging - and interesting). It’s serving me fine for work and grad school. As long as you learn the habits of hard work <em>somewhere</em>, you can call on them when you need them.</p>