Not sure who you are? A memoir for those navigating their 20's.

I grew up loving to read. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve craved more real-life stories, and I’ve been seeking out more memoirs than fiction. I look for stories about real people going through extraordinary circumstances. Educated by Tara Westover is the most recent memoir from my personal library that I’ve finally gotten around to finishing, and I wish I had cracked it open sooner.

I credit my own education to a lot in my life — I’ve learned what I’m passionate about and what I’m not, and it’s definitely helped me land jobs. But Tara went until she was 17 without ever stepping foot in a classroom. She grew up in a family that disapproved of formal education, but somehow, through her own desire to succeed, she taught herself enough to pass the ACT and go on to study at BYU, then Cambridge and Harvard, earning a PHd in History. Tara uses education as a catalyst to understand her own identity, regardless of whether or not this identity comes with the approval of those she loves.

The Westover family as described in Tara’s memoir, Educated, holds loyalty to each other as the highest priority of all. It’s this “you’re either with us or against us” mentality that is the biggest source of conflict in Tara’s world as she becomes a young woman. She describes her life from childhood where her sole influences were her family…