My mother's siblings earned hard PHDs. My mom did not get anything past a BS.
She was easily the smartest of the bunch as she helped them with their homework in HS and college though she was the youngest. She could read the book and then solve the problems.
I have a number of short stories she wrote when in 2d-6th grade. The early ones were 20 pages long with the later ones 40 pages. They are very well done. About half are about the same character, a young girl who wants to be included in adult things.
She came of age in the 40s and 50s when young girls did not do sports nor were they academically encouraged.
At her funeral, a number of HS and work friends showed up.
I learned that she could hit home runs in grade school and middle school playing baseball with the boys teams. There is a stunning photo in a yearbook of her as a sophomore sitting on a piano singing. She was very pretty, slim, and tall. She completed algebra II, the highest math course in her HS, as a sophomore. I also found out that she spent most of her time in HS sitting in the back reading. I also found out that her dad was physically abusive especially to her.
And she never developed the discipline to focus on her writing, though she rose quite high in the companies she was in. A boss from work told me she could spot fraud by talking to people or eyeballing detailed financials.
Looking back, she probably had no outlets for her talents most of her life. And more valued for her looks, cut off from sports in late middle school, and with a limited academic program in HS, she found barriers everywhere that she had real growth potential.
