Not hippie - my parents were not hippies - but they were very supportive and encouraging, and that does a lot for someone, and it gives them a lot of confidence.
I was cleaning out the pigsty at a farm in Wales, where my mother had rented a room, when the results of my final school exam were handed to me by the postman, along with the news that I had a state scholarship to Oxford. I had waited for this letter for so many weeks that I had abandoned hope, deci