#womencrushwednesday | Tara Westover
The book “Educated” generated quite a buzz when it first came out — I saw the book cover everywhere with the illustration of a giant pencil and a woman standing on a hill. Since it was so popular I had to wait for a couple months and finally got my hands on the Audiobook and I’m happy to report that the book was well worth the wait. In this inspirational memoir Westover documented her journey from learning to read at home to earning a PhD at Cambridge. However the true education came when she was able to refute her family’s abusive indoctrination and conclude a new ideology for herself.
My favorite part of the book was when she started reading on her own. They didn’t have textbooks at home but had a lot of scriptures so those were what she read. Her quest for knowledge pushed her to read things she couldn’t comprehend but she kept trying. One of my favorite quotes from the book is this: “The skill I was learning was a crucial one, the patience to read things I could not yet understand”. Later on she would credit her relentlessness to be one of the reasons why she succeeded. This gives me the hope that with perseverance one can break through unfavorable circumstances; that a child who taught herself to read can eventually earn a doctorate and discover a completely different perspective all on her own.
As a kid, books were always a passion of mine and I would borrow a lot of them from the library. But instead of reading them I would let the difficult books get the best of me and give up easily. I wish I knew then what I know now: if I kept trying, I will eventually understand them. Now that I’ve slowly built my confidence in reading to where it should be, I am finally no longer timid — but I regret taking so long to learn this lesson. One of the biggest lessons I learned from this book is with grit and tenacity, one can achieve a wealth of unimaginable things that were once thought out of reach.
