Author: Tara Westover [Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35133922-educated) Recommended By: [[Person - Anna Shi]] ## Notes `loc.513`: > “A woman’s place is in the home,” he would say every time he saw a married woman working in town. Now I’m older, I sometimes wonder if Dad’s fervor had more to do with his own mother than with doctrine. I wonder if he just wished that she had been home, so he wouldn’t have been left for all those long hours with Grandpa’s temper. Interesting to see how her father's belief regarding women may have been influenced by his own mother not being there and him subconsciously needing his women to be at home. `loc.578`: > "When I picture her now I conjure a single image, as if my memory is a slide projector and the tray is stuck." ^5d10c4 Really liked this metaphor. `loc.1056`: > The skill I was learning was a crucial one, the patience to read things I could not yet understand. This is where her first true education begins. Alone, just her trying to decipher the meaning hidden inside the books she had access to - the Book of Mormon, the Old and New Testaments. What's interesting here is that at the beginning she didn't understand anything, but she persisted and over time gained more and more insight. I think the quality of insight she gained here, and the skill of interpreting such books by sheer perseverance and pure curiosity - served her greatly down the road and made her a very good academic. `loc.2060`: > I didn’t see where college fit in. Tyler seemed to read my thoughts. “You know Sister Sears?” he said. Sister Sears was the church choir director. “How do you think she knows how to lead a choir?” I’d always admired Sister Sears, and been jealous of her knowledge of music. I’d never thought about how she’d learned it. “She studied,” Tyler said. “Did you know you can get a degree in music? If you had one, you could give lessons, you could direct the church choir. Even Dad won’t argue with that, not much anyway.” What caught my attention here was how Tyler (Tara's older brother) had convinced her to go to college. Instead of going for her logical mind, trying to rationalize all the reasons why she should do it, he went for her heart. This reminded me of my relationship with P. Often times I would try to convince her of doing something because it was the logical thing to do, and often it wouldn't work. Now I'm thinking it would be better to associate and relate whatever I'm trying to convince someone of, to their own wants and feelings. `loc.3725`: > I’d wanted moral advice, someone to reconcile my calling as a wife and mother with the call I heard of something else. But he’d put that aside. He’d seemed to say, “First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are.” > > I applied to the program. ^3db933 The advice from Dr. Kelly resonated with me. `loc.3832`: > Is that why you can stand in this wind?” > > I had to think before I could answer. “I can stand in this wind, because I’m not trying to stand in it,” I said. “The wind is just wind. You could withstand these gusts on the ground, so you can withstand them in the air. There is no difference. Except the difference you make in your mind.” > > He stared at me blankly. He hadn’t understood. > > “I’m just standing,” I said. “You are all trying to compensate, to get your bodies lower because the height scares you. But the crouching and the sidestepping are not natural. You’ve made yourselves vulnerable. If you could just control your panic, this wind would be nothing.” > > “The way it is nothing to you,” he said. #seedling `loc.3874`: Another cool metaphor: > I had been taught to read the words of men like Madison as a cast into which I ought to pour the plaster of my own mind, to be reshaped according to the contours of their faultless model. I read them to learn what to think, not how to think for myself. ^fb7196 `loc.4101`: This reminded be of [[Buddhism#Mastery of the Self]]. > In Cambridge they were talking about Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty": > The lecturer tried to clarify. He said positive liberty is self-mastery—the rule of the self, by the self. To have positive liberty, he explained, is to take control of one’s own mind; to be liberated from irrational fears and beliefs, from addictions, superstitions and all other forms of self-coercion. `loc.4146`: First and second waves of feminism. [Mary Wollstonecraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Wollstonecraft) and [John Stuart Mill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill). `loc.4741`: More influential people: Hume, Rousseau, Adam Smith, William Godwin, Wollstonecraft and Mill. `loc.4809`: Cool metaphor: > We entered the Sacred Grove. I walked ahead and found a bench beneath a canopy of trees. It was a lovely wood, heavy with history. ^8ac975 `loc.5220`: > But vindication has no power over guilt. No amount of anger or rage directed at others can subdue it, because guilt is never about *them*. Guilt is the fear of one’s own wretchedness. It has nothing to do with other people. > > I shed my guilt when I accepted my decision on its own terms, without endlessly prosecuting old grievances, without weighing his sins against mine. Without thinking of my father at all. The relief came when I turned inward. When I discovered, finally, that the decision could be upheld for my own sake. Because of me, not because of him. Because I needed it, not because he deserved it. Accepting your decision on its own terms and not by contrasting it to others. If the decision is based on your own values that you believe in, then maybe that's enough to go ahead with that decision, even if it is tough. Can this be relevant for my feelings on studying? Accepting the decision to study abroad on its own terms - and not trying to compare it to studying here... ## Summary I've always been curious what it is like to live different lives, to view reality from someone else's perspective. This book does exactly that. Tara is from a survivalist family in the middle of nowhere and consequently knows only what her family tells her and the small life in their Mormon village. As she gets older she understands there may be more to the world than what her parents tell her. She starts educating herself by reading the old and new testaments as well as Mormon texts. She teaches herself Algebra and is able to pass the ACT to get admitted into university. There she learns for the first time the true nature of the world and its history, and she comes face to face with a question of how to live her life - as the girl from Idaho that her parents demand her to be, or the women she could possibly become. This question accompanies her throughout her academic career where she continues to discover herself, until finally she is strong enough to stand up for her own principles and values and go her own way. It's really well written which makes it all the more impressive considering she pretty much knew nothing until 17 years old. Her description of the characters and her analysis of them also shed light on the complexity of humans - her parents seem to genuinely love her, but they are blind to the suffering they have caused, and continue to cause. An example of this is when her father begs her not to go abroad because he won't be able to save her, while at the same time being the one putting her in danger when using the iron cutter. Her story also shows that "education" isn't the college you go to, or the facts you passively consume. For Tara, education was the ability to discover herself, to make her own thoughts and decide what to do with her life. Her journey and struggles definitely help put mine into perspective and my main takeaways from her story are that humans can be quite complicated creatures and a behaviour that seems simple on the outside could have a very deep and complex web underneath. That and also the value of pursuing an education out of pure curiosity. *** ## Footnotes Resources - [May Ling's review](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3214163388)