I was quite the opposite during school. I was a voracious reader and ate knowledge like pigeons eat anything;) I enjoyed history most of all and still gravitate to it til this day. You're right, people spend hours researching a book, days, years to compile the basic knowledge to put it together. I wrote a manuscript it took me two years after 5 years of testing, reading, trying only to have it unpublished at the end of the day as the market crash of 2009 thanks to a certain US president. Instead I became a buyer of books as they were so cheap at that point,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, it's refreshing to see that people still  do read.