No one in my family ever went to college.....I pushed myself because growing up...in the schools at least in California in the 60's....we were encouraged to go to college & be anything we wanted to be if we applied ourself...& applying myself was one thing I was good at. I wasn't an outstanding student even though I had my share of 4.0 semesters....I also had my share of struggling with chemistry & calculus.....but could do almost anything else I was interested in.....so I went for it even though my parents had no idea how to encourage me to succeed at anything....they also didn't discourage....so I guess the "no harm" was a good solution.....they let me excell or fail given my own drive which had always been outstanding.

On the other note....I met a guy in college who bragged about his high IQ & his outstanding GPA in HighSchool while he failed miserably in college because he thought himself smarter than most of the professors so refused to apply himself to the classes he didn't care about.....sadly, it was the attitude he had about everything in his life...not just his college work......had absolutely NO COMMON SENSE.....things I saw before I got married that were red flags while my mother suggested that he would mature as he got older.....never did.....as I was leaving him...he was still claiming that he was a failure as an engineer because of the university he went to.....the same one that his younger brother graduated from with honors & became an associate director of a power company.......Both had equal intelligence.....however one had the desire to apply himself & work for everything while the other wanted everything handed to him on a silver platter & didn't want to work for anything....sadly, I chose the looser who never did grow up & learn how to be responsible financially or otherwise. It was definitely interesting to observe the 2 different personalities coming from the same home & same upbringing......not sure what really makes the internal values that drive success vs failure....but it's definitely interesting to observe.