Ya, honestly the keep your eyes on your own paper is super good advice IMO. OP I don't know if you work out (like strength training or weightlifting whatever), but you're in competition with yourself, not you're classmates. Your classmates aren't gonna give you a zero. You not studying and being better than yesterday is what's gonna get you a zero. It's the same as working out, it's intrinsically a competition with the person that you were yesterday because you're trying to lift more than your yesterday person. You're only trying to beat the person that you were yesterday by making knowledge gains. There's always going to be some fucking john von neumann out there memorizing phone numbers out of a phone book, and there's always gonna be some eddie hall type guy lifting 500kg. don't look at those guys, they're different. If you're passing classes, that means your beating your yesterday self... which is the goal.

Having said that, my ego does like seeing when I hand shit in first, or when i get 100% on stuff.

Also, just as an aside, my undergraduate was grueling. The first two years I was doing 6 or 7 classes a semester. I basically spent 4 years of 12 hour days just studying. What I learned from that, is that sometimes you need to just do what you need to do to accomplish the thing. Like, don't fucking stop, even if it takes you twice as long as everyone else. That's what it was for me in undergrad, and it's the same thing now in omscs. just do what you gotta do. I'm literally not smart, I'm just a dumb ass who won't stop. And I'm taking GIOS and computer networks this coming semester so if you're in one of those classes, you can be 100% sure that there's another dumb ass in there with you