Quick and eager, she was labeled a gifted student, only to discover, she said, that meant receiving less attention from teachers. When she asked for challenging work or encouragement, she said, some teachers warned her about being too big for her britches.
Beginning in middle school, her parents sent her to summer academic programs at Purdue University, where she learned how other students could take advanced-placement classes for college-credit at their high schools.
Before her freshman year at Covington High School, she wrote in her diary: “I do want to get out of here as soon as possible, & everyone knows it.”
The teenager set her sights on the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities, a state-sponsored boarding school for bright high school juniors and seniors. Her mother was immovably opposed.