“I flirted with the idea back in high school, and thought I could finish college in a year and a half, in three semesters,” Banh said. “But after my first semester [at UVa], I realized I had all this extra time, and that if I stayed for a second year I didn’t have a way to pay for it without taking out loans.”

I’ve sometimes wondered what I might have accomplished in my college (and before that high school) career, if I’d studied more, or taken different classes, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have either the discipline or the smarts to pull something like this off.