You can then still apply your usual filters afterwards, such as smell, looks, vibes.

This is wrong. Stable matches still mean something, and in fact probably mean quite a lot.

You are given a much better match than a random pairing. If you still aren't interested, you can decline. If you go on a date and it doesn't work out, you can decline.

Nothing forces you to use this process, it is just an offer of a significantly better than random matching to what you might prefer.

It doesn't even need to account for preferences not covered by the questionnaire.

I spent my vacation reading From Third World to First by Lee Kuan Yew.

And I have a couple of university textbooks (Physics and Biology) lying about, waiting for me to keep working on them.

I concur with the general feeling of it being difficult to plan much ahead. I think that learning and reading is good, and has been good basically always (just because someone else knows something doesn't mean that you shouldn't learn it too, even if this someone else is an LLM).

Anyway, I enjoyed your post and mostly feel the same (and funnily I have similar interests).

I much prefer the first.

School shouldn't be impossible, but you shouldn't have a charade of schooling.

Obviously, extra practice is a good idea.

Sounds super 1337 and I hope it's actually possible somehow.