I mean, the author isnt trying to make her a precocious darling or whatever. Its being made pretty clear that she has a lot of issues to deal with connected, presumably, to the fact that she was probably a studying hermit under pressure all her life and now that she is a doctor of whatever her fields are she is basically cut loose with no idea of what to do from here because she spent all her time cramming for tests and none learning things like how to socialize or even considering what comes next after getting her degree. She is twisted up inside because she thinks that as an adult she should be able to handle this and that asking for help would be shameful and spent two years being twisted up inside because she has nobody she feels like she can turn to, and her abrasive personality, being a mixture of being treated as special all her life and not interacting with anyone outside of her professors and parents pushes everyone away before they can really spot the problems she has. When the only interaction she has with outsiders is yelling at moray "Im special leave me alone to do special stuff!!!" once a month, its no wonder that she has a bad rep and nobody guessing what her problems actually were till she forced herself to interact with marten as long as they did. Its not a perfectly written character, but its a pretty solid one imo with logical connections for all her traits and problems.