“It’s good to lead a monk’s existence [in college]," says Eric Gorski, an Associated Press writer who reported on the study. "Students who study alone and have heavier reading and writing loads do well.”

I think I'm a victim of this. I was one of the students who had no social life in high school / college and just studied all the time, alone. I received excellent grades, my teachers praised my dedication to my studies (I received a lot of scholarships because of it), and graduated with degrees in both computer science and mathematics.

Unfortunately, I'm learning the hard way that maybe the party-goers with mediocre grades had the right idea all along. Strong interpersonal and communication skills seem far more important than any technical skill, which is why I'm struggling to hold a job. I couldn't cut it as a computer programmer, nor as a math teacher because my "soft" skills remain woefully underdeveloped.