Educated

I have a golden rule when it comes to books: I need to take at least one lesson out of it before getting to the final pages. It could be a science fiction book or self-help book, or memoir. There has to be a lesson inside.

When I picked up Educated by Tara Westover at the Istanbul airport, I was quite sure that this is a story about why education matters. How education can change your life or maybe this book will tell the story of how traditional education is still relevant in the modern world.

I got boarded on a plane; the flight attendant gave me a pretty straightforward look that I need to take off my noise-canceling headphones before the takeoff, so I decided to start reading the book right where I was - seat A14 on a Turkish Airlines flight.

This book blew me away. Ok, ok. Full stop here. I have to explain why.

One thing which strikes you pretty much from the first chapter is how well-written the book is. You are immersed in the atmosphere immediately; you are there in the moment when the story unwraps itself. A story of young women's journey from her isolated life in the mountains of Idaho to getting into the Ph.D. program at Cambridge University. From having no formal education to suddenly being in college at the age of seventeen; all this while struggling to fit between worlds - the one her radical survivalist father created for her and the world beyond the mountains.

Was there a story about why education matters in the modern world? Not precisely. Was this a tale of how education changed someone's life? Yeah, probably. So what was the lesson of this book, you could ask me?

The lesson was that you could give birth to your own mind and education is precisely the tool to help you do it.