Why Spend the Time and Effort? Because They’re Outstanding.

The blogger gives an example:

My senior labmate couldn't graduate back then. In fact, everyone in our lab—my fellow male and female students—had already read her thesis. No matter who you ask, whether it's her advisor, co-advisor, or any one of her labmates, just one person willing to help would have needed at most one weekend, no more than 20 hours, to fix it.

How easy was that? Yet, did anyone help her? No. Not a single person.

That's what being unexceptional looks like.

When you're not good enough, people won't even spare 20 hours of their time on you, because everyone assumes you'll never be able to repay the favor.