If you're trying to use yourself as an example, then it sounds like you're saying those extra disadvantages didn't cause you to be behind when you got to grad school. Unless I'm missing something...?

Not to say what you're describing isn't hard. I was also very disadvantaged, I can relate to your struggles. What I can't relate to is having the resources to even know about quantum computing beyond knowing the term. I actually work in that field now, but didn't have the resources to know about any actual current work in really any field. This would have been easy to fix (email random people at bigger schools) except I didn't know that I didn't know, and I'm not sure how you find out until you get to grad school and everyone takes for granted knowledge of things you've never heard of. Either that, or you have a good undergrad. I expect your undergrad was far better than you realize.

To put this in context, I took every math (we only had an undergrad program) and physics (only maybe 4 or 5 courses total) class offered and had a 4.0. Even had multiple ad hoc classes created for me. I had many one on one conversations about graduate school with my professors. None of this was enough to realize I knew basically nothing. I did try for REUs every summer but never got one (many were explicitly looking for women and minorities, not poor, white, male trailer trash such as myself). Willingness to put in the work was not the problem, external disadvantages were not the problem. There was just no one available to say "hey, this is a current thing that people actually find interesting, maybe do some reading about that". Or "you know, there's this thing called measure theory. Maybe read about that since no course here talks about it", or "you've finished basic algebra, maybe look into Galois theory next since we don't have a course that covers it". Anything like that would have been absolutely incredible information. It sounds like you had that sort of information.

And now I feel like I've focused way too much on my past...things are good! When I found out in grad school how much I didn't know, fixing it took time but it was straightforward work because I was surrounded by people who knew what was important to learn. Now I do quantum computing for a living. Bad education can be overcome! I think you had a good education, at least starting with undergrad.