My brother made sure I had attention of some sort. (despite the 8yr age difference, we are close)
I just always felt the family paid more attention to my brother and his stuff and my little cousin. Despite my rocking in school.
It took my little cousin flunking out of university after 1 semester for me to get some form of recognition. It also helped that I had gone through stuff with money and getting screwed over and yet still continuing on in college despite all of that crap and also making Dean's list a bunch of times.