When I was in school, I'd joke around the same way with my friends. I was never doing poorly overall, but programming especially came pretty easy to me, and because I was interested in it, I worked ten times 'harder' than a lot of my peers. I'd spend 40 hours on a program getting it just right because I wanted to, stay up nights weeks before the program was due because it was fun and at no point did this feel like 'work' for me, and so I never stressed out about it. It wasn't that I wasn't putting in a lot of hard work, I'd just never tell anyone I was working hard - not because I wanted to lie, but because I didn't feel that way.

As a result of this, for my first couple of years I'd score over 100% on these classes, while having a middling C+ to B+ in the rest of my classes, and of course, this is where my parents would get upset. They'd say I spent too much time playing around, this is a time for study, and so it wasn't until I had the time to look back on it that I realized I actually wasn't a bad student, I could have worked harder but overall I was pretty okay - my parents were just trying to make sure I was putting in my effort.

So when I'd joke about these things to my friends, I assumed they were all like me - not really about to fail, but not really putting in their full effort. When one of my friends noticed my exam grades and class grades, he became very bitter, and this post reminded me a bit of that. He felt like I was lying to him, that I could have/should have helped him out when I knew he was doing so poorly - and this really confused me at the time, and we drifted apart because of it.

This friend was amazing at math, and math is something I always had a really hard time doing and could never get my head wrapped around, even though I liked it quite a bit. When I asked him for help on one of my assignments, he scoffed and said "Oh, now you want me to help you?"

I think perspective helps make this story make sense, but at the time I was very confused and didn't really understand what was happening. So, OP, if you're still reading this, I've been in this scenario from the other end, so if you felt betrayed or alone or lied to at all, I hope this provides some insight on what's going on on the other side.