Beginner's advantage

Something I have noticed happen, over and over again.

I have good 'raw' intelligence. I grasp new concepts very fast.
I'm usually the smartest kid (and a vocal one, too) in an introductory class.

And then something happens.

I get smug. lazy. distracted. I remain stunted at the initial surge of understanding.
because I simply don't know how to *consciously* advance my learning.

In other words., I don't know how to learn to learn.

This is perhaps why my relationships with people don't get deeper over time either.
I manage to establish a very good initial rapport initially. but the understanding doesn't
increase over time.

and we all know, E = RG + RL * t

Where
E : Expertise (or Success or Mastery or..)
RG : Raw Goods
RL : Rate of Learning
t : Time

My raw smarts are not massive enough to compensate for the close-to-zero rate of learning.
Result? My success-over-time graph is a steady short plateau..

This totally SUCKS.