I'm an engineer. If I'm designing "X", I'm much more satisfied if I can find a way to do it in a day modifying "Y" than if I spent two weeks building up "X" from scratch.
Hard work also depends on the context and again we're talking about school where students have limited choices over what they're working on. I hated writing. I still hate writing. Spending long hours writing an essay on Camus didn't make me feel satisfied, it made me feel drained. Even if I'd gotten an A ( I can't remember, I might have if only because no one else was dumb enough to take on French extisentialism ) it wasn't satisfying because I didn't care if I was a good writer or not.
Hard work also depends on the context and again we're talking about school where students have limited choices over what they're working on. I hated writing. I still hate writing. Spending long hours writing an essay on Camus didn't make me feel satisfied, it made me feel drained. Even if I'd gotten an A ( I can't remember, I might have if only because no one else was dumb enough to take on French extisentialism ) it wasn't satisfying because I didn't care if I was a good writer or not.