BPI - motivation is the key. Our two favourite students were fishermen, who told us that they were hard workers. Well, they were right. The lowest mark between them was 93%, and they even got their ship's master to teach them spherical trig in the evenings after the fishing was done (if you thought the ATPL was bad, try a first mate's exam!).
Anyhow, one of them is flying, the other simply ran out of money otherwise I'm sure he would have made it too.
The moral of the story is that, if those guys can do it, nobody else has an excuse for not doing the work.
Neil Sedaka always said that there were plenty of people who could sing and play the piano much better than him, but they didn't have the ambition. So true.