A review by cutearwen
Educated by Tara Westover

inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I’m somewhat fascinated by both mormons and traumatic women memoirs and this book check the box. On the other hand, I didn’t really feel there was enough about her education… The author doesn’t really explain how she studied. “I studied a lot” — what does that mean? How can you score 100% on a math test in university if you barely studied it before? What was so special about her essays that she won the “most outstanding graduate” award? She of course mentions some points, like her not knowing what the bubble sheet is at first exam but using that as a learning experience or her classmate teaching her to read an art textbook. But as the title is “Educated”, I wanted to learn much more about the actual process of studying…

Also I felt she got a lot of support from professors because she was a fun, peculiar case for them — a girl who got denied formal education by her parents out of principle. If she was neglected by her parents because of addiction or poverty and went to bas public school, no one would have forgiven her lack of knowledge and supported her. So it was hard to fully appreciate her achievements (even though I have a PhD myself and understand it is no easy task).

The thing I’m mort curious about is how come all three Westover siblings who left the mountain got PhDs. What was so special about their absent education that helped them achieve such academic heights?