Work, read and be modest
Chad advice from the author of The Nutcracker
In 1866 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote to his younger brother Anatoly, a student in the College of Law:
“My dear Tolyasha! Regarding the idea of insignificance and uselessness that you seem to be haunted by, I would like to advise you to discard these foolish fantasies. They are extremely outdated; in our day, such sentiments about one's own person were considered fashionable, a sign that our upbringing was carried out extremely carelessly. For a young man of 16, it is not appoproate to spend time thinking about and planning their future. You should only focus on making the present day attractive, so you (a 16-year-old) are satisfied with yourself.
To achieve this, I recommend the following:
1) Work, work hard, and avoid idleness, so that you can be prepared to endure hard work later on;
2) Read a lot;
3) Be as modest about yourself as possible. In other words, understand that you are not stupid and don’t consider others stupid just because you are not. Also, don't think that some mysterious influence is preventing the crowd from seeing your talents and abilities. Generally, prepare to be a normal, good person, not a genius to whom the law does not apply;
4) Do not get carried away with the desire to please and charm; in relationships with friends (and this is very important when you are in college), do not be too proud, but also do not fawn for their friendship. As for those who do not like you or treat you carelessly, pay them back with the same coin, but avoid sentimental quarrels and equally sensitive reconciliations.
5) Do not be embarrassed by setbacks, such as bad grades, Schneider's injustice. Yazykov's frenzy, Gorlov's and Alopeus's foolishnes etc. — all these things are piddly trifles compared to what will happen in your life after graduation. I hope you going to are the best in your class, but even if you are the last, I would not be angry with you, if only I knew it wasn't because of laziness.
6) But most important is not to overthink yourself and just prepare for the fate of an ordinary mortal. You say being an official is not attractive. And I will tell you that I know a lot of the smartest, most talented and most educated people who have spent their whole lives working in departments, but they did not see themselves as unrecognized geniuses and were therefore happy (examples: Pichugin, Adamov, Maslov, Sytin, etc.)”
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still good advice. read some old Greek stuff and the advice does not really change! nothing new under the sun.