Logic Comes To The Rescue

School vs Life

1. Strong feelings make us say or commit to things.
2. Other strong feelings make us do things (which sometimes run counter to what we said or committed to earlier).
3. Our logical mind resolves the issue by explaining how our circumstances constrained our actions.

In the absence of the logical explanation (3 above) the person is left looking silly - having said something and done something else.

It's the logical mind in strongly emotional people that helps them survive the tricky situation that is created (1 and 2 above) and get out of it elegantly. So it looks like the commitment was given in good faith, something else was done only because of circumstances. 

The focus is left on the good intentions and taken away from actions not leading to the intentions being fulfilled.

Animals are aware of only point no. 2 - the action which in their case is about eating and procreation. Humans have identified points 1 and 3 as important activities other than point 2. 

It's point no. 2 where we meet expectations or in this case fall below expectations. When at school, we are graded based on how much we met expectations. Points 1 and 3 don't play much part in our student lives.
In our adult life, it's how well we handle points 1 and 3 that determine our success, not how well we meet expectations. 

 Loosely we can term point 2 as hard skills. Points 1 and 3 are the soft skills.