You are going to have a job or you can have a career or you can have a calling. If you can somehow figure out how to have a calling early, you have hit the jackpot. It is a big deal because not only do you get a large head start, most people go their whole life without finding it. You're very lucky if you have a career and a lot of people end up with a job. You have to actively search for it and it requires a great amount of luck. Luckily college is a great place to explore interests. When you are excited for life and the future, you are probably onto something.
One of the most important decisions in college is the people you choose to surround yourself with. Make sure one of these people is a professor who you admire and can mentor you. You must be proactive in your search, these mentorships will not fall into your lap. I accelerated my learning by picking the brains of my advisor and senior members of his lab. They critiqued my code, suggested ideas for research direction, and connected me with their network. All the cool projects I have been part of in JPL, Cepton, and Tesla were because of them.
If you focus on the controllable inputs to your education instead of your outputs, in the long term you get better results. I found it helpful to understand my final output and work backwards. What are the inputs to my desired output. I keep working backwards until I get to something that is controllable. A controllable input managed well will create a chain reaction back to the final output. Sometimes the changes in the output is not as dramatic or soon as you'd prefer, but as long as the inputs keep improving good stuff will happen.
EDIT: I realized that this might be a tad abstract so I'll give an example: An output I value is doing well in my classes. The controllable inputs are better discipline and study techniques. If I can get better at maintaining a study schedule and develop better study habits, I am most certain to do better in classes over time. That does not mean I will get 100% on each exam but there will be a noticable upward trend.
It is easy for a talented young person to take pride in their gifts. They can say they are very athletic or very good at math. I don't think its something to be proud of. They are gifts after all. What they should take pride in are choices. How did they decide to use these gifts? Did they study hard? Did they work hard? Did they practice hard? The people who excel combine gifts and hard work. The hard work part is a choice. Everyone gets to decide that. It takes time and effort to develop the mental fortitude to appreciate and sustain hard work.
I would argue that the most important organ to be a successful student is not brains nor heart but stomach. If you cannot stomach failure or setbacks and learn from them, then you are handicapped from taking long exciting journeys.
Its important to have a blueprint for life, a goal to aim towards.