During her first few years at Graceland, Priscilla was burning the candles at both ends. Still enrolled at school, she would go to classes in the day before staying up late into the early hours of the morning, accompanying Elvis to movies and fairgrounds.
Describing this time in her life, she wrote: "Every free moment was devoted to cramming a whole semester's work into a few weeks. But my concentration was scatted; the strain of life at Graceland had finally caught up with me."
To help her pass her exams, Priscilla said that she, at Elvis' encouragement, started taking a cocktail of prescription pills to "maintain the fast pace, and more importantly, to study for my final exams."
This was after she had a bad experience with sleeping pills that put her in a two-day sleep, as depicted in the Coppola film.
While she considered confiding in one of the nuns at her Catholic school about how much she was drowning under the weight of the pressure to get good grades and be there for Elvis, she ultimately chose not to.
Instead, Priscilla said she passed her exams by bribing a straight-A student to slide her test paper across so she could copy down answers.