Reality

What's the most efficient motor driver for a small DC motor that I want to run off a 5V source for aurdino?

I previously had a L293D and it was inefficient as fuck, it got so hot that almost burnt my finger, (ran it from a 12V supply) and it dropped a good 2 volts from power supply to motor.

Is there a good enough off the shelf driver or do I have to make a H-bridge myself using MOFSETs?

Is connecting your aurdino and motors that it'll drive (through a motor driver of course) to the same battery bad for the aurdino?
I mean those are small DC brushed motors, will the noise/fluctuatuons they generate harm the aurdino in the long run?

Any gift recommendations. My birthday comes up in a few days and he asked what I wanted as a birthday gift(gifts are supposed to suprises but being able to choose is good still).

However I cannot ask for electronic gadgets. That knocks a lot of stuff of. The exception is that if something does not make me spend more time on the computer that is allowed. Kinda weird. For example I can ask for a printer or medical equipment like oximeters since that wont make me spend more time on the computer. Both of these examples were given by my father. I could ask for a new printer however we still have a printer but it is currently in the shop since it is not being used and the shops printer broke and is hell to replace since they need chips to verify toners and you need to get those chips separately from what my father told me and the shops printer should be repaired in a few months since lockdown was lifted a few days ago and I won't need to print something since everything is online and they don't need to show student projects yet.

Thia knocks a lot of hardware off since by definition if I am using hardware I still need to code it to do something which is more time on computer which is not allowed. So no fiddling with aurdino or rasberry pie or whatever is the most used hardware kit.

I can buy some course or a book to learn something but I already have problems with consistently learning c# with a good book which will lose value in November and that most topics I would like to learn like computer networking or some new language are practical which is more time on computer which is not allowed.

So the only thing I can buy are some books to enjoy reading for fun or some school books like a science digest book like Together with or the ultra popular maths reference book RD Sharma

So what things should I ask which comply with the rules my father has laid or just skip this thing