We can mean many things by lazy. One meaning is actively avoiding work, and another is not being disciplined.
I knew quite a few of my classmates at MIT who never learned to focus and direct their energies. Even advanced/AP/IB classes in high school didn't require them to focus for very long at a time. It's not that they disliked work, it was that they had never before practiced focusing for very long. Also, being obviously smart, teachers and administrators had always made exceptions for them.
My old room mate was a regional US chess champion and widely regarded as one of the smartest in our MIT peer group. He really enjoyed difficult problems, but lacked the ability to steer his intellect. When he was in high school in Atlanta, there was a school program where the government would pay the AP exam fees for any student who signed up, as long as they didn't sign up for two exams that were concurrently administered. There was no requirement that the student take the corresponding course. Partly to demonstrate the wastefulness of the program, my old room mate got a schedule, signed up for all of the exams corresponding to his classes, and also filled in his schedule with as many exams as possible. When the administration discovered his little demonstration, they called him in and told him that he would be actually taking all of the exams, and there would be stern consequences if he didn't pass all of them. I think the threat was to bill his parents for the exam fees for intentionally wasting school resources. They told his teachers what was going on and that he was to be excused from normal classroom activities in order to sit in the corner of the classroom and study from a textbook for a different subject. He passed a full slate of exams, most without benefit of instruction, and most with background distraction of an unrelated class going on in the background while he studied.
He wouldn't have been able to do this if he were merely adverse to work or unable to focus. However, the motivation to focus was externally applied. At least until his early 30s, he never gained the ability to will himself to focus, and he never got an undergraduate degree.
I knew quite a few of my classmates at MIT who never learned to focus and direct their energies. Even advanced/AP/IB classes in high school didn't require them to focus for very long at a time. It's not that they disliked work, it was that they had never before practiced focusing for very long. Also, being obviously smart, teachers and administrators had always made exceptions for them.
My old room mate was a regional US chess champion and widely regarded as one of the smartest in our MIT peer group. He really enjoyed difficult problems, but lacked the ability to steer his intellect. When he was in high school in Atlanta, there was a school program where the government would pay the AP exam fees for any student who signed up, as long as they didn't sign up for two exams that were concurrently administered. There was no requirement that the student take the corresponding course. Partly to demonstrate the wastefulness of the program, my old room mate got a schedule, signed up for all of the exams corresponding to his classes, and also filled in his schedule with as many exams as possible. When the administration discovered his little demonstration, they called him in and told him that he would be actually taking all of the exams, and there would be stern consequences if he didn't pass all of them. I think the threat was to bill his parents for the exam fees for intentionally wasting school resources. They told his teachers what was going on and that he was to be excused from normal classroom activities in order to sit in the corner of the classroom and study from a textbook for a different subject. He passed a full slate of exams, most without benefit of instruction, and most with background distraction of an unrelated class going on in the background while he studied.
He wouldn't have been able to do this if he were merely adverse to work or unable to focus. However, the motivation to focus was externally applied. At least until his early 30s, he never gained the ability to will himself to focus, and he never got an undergraduate degree.