Once upon a time, there was a little girl who had trouble focussing on her studies. So far, so common. Little girls are not especially biddable, and this one was stubborn even for her age. 

This little girl was a magician's daughter, though, an heir to the Toronto enclave, and if she didn't study she would probably die. 

The logic of this did not persuade the stubborn eight year old. Oh, she was scared of the monsters alright. Terrified, in fact. But that didn't help her focus on her studies any. She knew English and Mandarin well enough, having been raised in them from birth, but when her parents tried to add French it was a disaster. The grammar was too difficult, the verb forms too irregular. And the sheer volume of words - well. The girl had a memory like a steel seive. 

They told her to work harder. She was too young to know better, to realize that she was pushing her limits. She dutifully tried, and tried, and tried, for four long years, and by the end of it she sort of knew french and by halfway through it her parents were done with the idea of taking her language track. 

She did better in her other training. She could run, oh could she ever run. She could fight pretty well for a girl of ten, with kicks and eyegouges and elbow strikes, dirty and effective. And when they tried her on alchemy, something beautiful blossomed. 

The girl took to distilling and rarefacting and drawing of principles like breathing. She spent most of each day running experiments. She barely slept without having something filtering overnight. 

But by then, the damage was done. She enjoyed alchemy, but she hated her studies. She would not submit to her parents' assignments, would not turn her hand to practical pursuits. Her parents caught her more than once making things she should not have been making, certainly not at twelve. 

She learned to be clever. She learned to be quiet. And in time, she figured out her own problem, the problem her parents had never considered she might have. 

Amphetamines were easy enough to synthesize once she knew, and she was smart enough and disciplined enough to take a safe dose. Better still were the focus potions she developed for herself, that brought her monomaniacal love for alchemy to the aid of her other studies. 

She knew, by now, that she was bound for the Scholomance, far away from her parents' rules. So she laid low. She dosed herself measuredly. Her parents marvelled at the way she blossomed, in those final two years. How she soaked up information like a sponge, how she worked twelve and fourteen hour days without any breaks. She had become the image of a model student - if only she hadn't wasted so much time!

And quietly, the girl made a promise to herself. 

To hell with this once I get to the Scholomance.

I'm not going to die never having really lived.