I won a scholarship to a top university for a specialized field. I did well enough in grad school to get another big scholarship and a teaching offer. I did get to know some of the top names in the field well. But my grad experience had been a massive slog, I went through a very bad divorce during it, and I was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown. I did finish my degree but almost literally put my books on a shelf and never read them again. My supervisor later called me “the lost one.” A former girlfriend called me A Beautiful Mind. I wonder what could have been.