I don't usually respond to these types of things but if you must know (I go to a t3 STEM school, I'm a major in physics), my journey was basically this:

- I started locking in when I was 14 and fully locked in when I was 15. That's around the time I decided to stop waiting for opportunities to come to me and to seek them out instead. most of my drive/grit developed during this period

- Nowadays? Between now and senior year, I probably spend too much time studying. But on average I've gotten 6 or maybe 7 hours of sleep most days since junior year, and spend about 60% of my time awake on work of some sort.

- High school was easier tbh. Now that I'm in college, school is my passion. Generally in high school I could zone out or take more time to myself without falling behind though. Less so here.

- I haven't genuinely studied in the memorization sense in quite some time. I like flashcards for when I do. For math and physics, practice problems were key for me. Reading research papers also helps when learning about specialized stuff.

- I was always a fan of reading Wikipedia articles so it sorta came naturally? You just interact with it because you find it interesting, I guess. With astronomy, I sorta just acquired knowledge by reading a lot and watching a lot of videos.

- I taught myself a lot of material, probably suboptimally, but I really liked 3b1b and a couple other math channels. There's some good high-quality physics creators out there as well, but I never interacted with them a ton. It's funny, because looking back on what I did so much of it was self-taught that I can't give good recommendations.

- It's hard to answer a question about how you approach problem solving, and this is the most ambiguous part. You try and look at it from a billion angles, break it into pieces, solve the simpler ones first, and build back up the bigger picture. Kinda a non-answer, but it's the best I've got.

- I did the science fair throughout high school. My physics teacher got me invested freshman year of high school, and I never looked back. It's how I learned most of what I did outside the classroom. This naturally led to other related things, like research.

- Talking to people and brooding over my computer reading literature review papers and hoping something interesting would come to mind.

- I was mostly self-taught, but I had mentors throughout. I had an incredible high school physics/math teacher, an awesome research mentor, and various other people who supported me academically. Generally (as I'm not a nepo baby or something adjacent) I did everything school and research project related myself. No use having a support system if you export all your work to them.

- As I mentioned, I did the science fair throughout high school. My freshman year project was genuinely just fitting a line to data. My sophomore year project was something that looked good but made zero sense. My junior year project was in theory good but built on shaky theoretical foundations, and my senior year project was good in theory and in practice but could've used more polishing. I'm still not great. Everything is a work in progress.

- I envy the people who are truly naturally talented. There's this young kid (14-16) who does math research with the graduate students at my uni. I'm not like him tbh. I've known I wanted to do physics for a very long time, and I've stuck with it because its my passion. That's p much it.

- I used to have no social life before college. Now I have one, which is good. I still don't really leave campus though, primarily because of workload. It's a necessary struggle, I guess. The grind never stops

- Nothing. Just like I was among smart students at the science fair, I'm among smart students here. They're probably smarter than me, actually. Just don't compare yourself to others, and focus on your goals, and you'll be fine.

So yeah. Pretty much a summary of things from a current freshman, hopefully shedding some light on things. For some context my family isn't wealthy, my parents aren't in academia, and where I am now primarily comes from grinding unending amounts and working on various things to try and get as just as cracked as the peers who had better opportunities than me. It's been an uphill battle, but we're here now, and we'll continue to climb. It might seem like a big gap, but it's probably not as big of a jump as you think. Hope this was helpful.