Group Names: Shawn Spencer, Amber Parker, Grace Hansen, Michael Chen

Educated: Week 5 Discussion

Please use a different color font for answers.

Roles

List any absent group members:

● Facilitator/Prioritizer: grace hansen

● Recorder: Amber Parker
● Connector: Michael Chen
● Questioner: Shawn Spencer

Notes

1. After Westover decides to continue her education, she finds it increasingly difficult to reconcile her life
on the mountain with her new life as a student of history. She writes that she had a “fractured mind.”
Does it seem to you that she must lose one life to gain another?
- Doesn't necessarily have to lose one to gain another
- Life before is what made her now
- Shouldn't have to scrap her childhood
- Use the things that she learned in the past to help with the future
- Keeping the skills she learned not who she was, memories not presence
- Has kept these aspects separate, two separate spheres of life
- Finds it difficult to combine them because she has kept them separate for too long
- Getting too old to be a child
- Changing personality to be an adult
- Scared to tell people about how she grew up
- Setting the past aside
- Build a sense of normality
- Disassociates herself from her childhood
- This is her coping mechanism
- Bleeds over to other aspects of her life
- Fractured mind: recognizes the spit, two spheres of life
- Doesn't know how to put the pieces together
- In her case, it may be necessary to give something up to feel whole again
- She has been split for so long that it may not be possible to combine them
- This is not always the case however

2. One of the most difficult scenes in the book comes near the end, when Westover realizes that Shawn
has killed his dog Diego after coming to her parents’ house with a knife in hand. How does this moment
change things for Westover?
- Transforms Shawn from a potential threat to an actual threat
 - Shows that he is actually capable of killing
- Change in him from just threats to actual action
- Can't laugh it off anymore
- Shawn wants the power over her
- Independent of family
- Shawn is afraid of losing the power over her
- Could be afraid of her and her independence
- Wants to control his own fears by having power over her
- Shows his psychopathic behavior
- Big difference between threats and actually killing something
- The way he killed the dog
- The knife is purposeful- so he can feel the kill
- More personal
- Shows intent and capability
- Gave her the message that she needs to get away from the family
- Push her to breaking ties and letting go rather than trying to hold on more

3. One professor describes Westover as “Pygmalion,” while Westover herself at one point says she
believed she could “be remade, my mind recast” at her university. And in the end, she writes that she is
a “changed person” from the person she was as her father’s daughter, and from her 16-year-old self.
“You could call this selfhood many things,” she writes. “Transformation. Metamorphosis. Falsity. Betrayal.
I call it an education.” What do you make of these final lines?
- Mirror, reflection of self, new self vs old self
- Recognize that strength isn't everything, that weakness is essential to grow
- 16 and dealing with the same issue
- Remaking herself, redefining herself through education
- The way she views herself is changed by her education
- She can actually live
- Her family didn't make her
- More than just being family, she exists outside of that
- Really good conclusion to the book
- Symbolizes her change and how she got there
- Go back to the roof moment
- She feels safe on top of the roof, not cowering like the rest of the people
- Says that there is no difference between standing on the roof and the ground, she can
withstand the same things on the roof as the ground
- Symbolic of her change throughout the book
- Start on the ground, not really comfortable
- When she is above all of it and can see the ground, she has comfort
- Withstands the same winds on the ground and the roof

4. Looking back over the book, what did you learn about family and forgiveness and trauma? What did
you learn about education? What is your biggest take-away?
- 3 that left the mountain and the 4 that stayed, 3 that have PhDs and the 4 that don't
- Education means expanding your boundaries and environment
- Symbol of buffalo princess
- There to stay, trap; but she actually welcomes you home
- Not mad at me for leaving, but is instead grateful that you come home
- Expanding beliefs outside of the family
- They don't have to control you
- Outside of her life, there are other people that can help you
- People have meaning outside of the family
- Forgiveness
- Forgive people at some point, but it doesn't have to be automatic
- It's a full process
- she has forgiven her family, they haven't forgiven her
- Give it time, time heals all wounds
- Forgiveness is essential to moving on and letting go
- She forgives her family (Shawn) to distance herself from the trauma they gave
her
- Trauma
- Have to talk to people and to open up in order to heal
- Accept that you need help
- Seen through her therapy sessions at school
- Gradual progression of growth
- Takes time to heal
- Education
- Eye-opening
- Very valuable if utilized correctly
- She found herself through her education
- Learned that she has a sense of self outside of the world her family had built
- Biggest take-aways:
- Grace: home is not where you are from but home will always welcome you home and
that being able to get through hard times is a sense of accomplishment and the winds of
life are the same no matter how high you are
- Amber: growth doesn't come all at once, the book goes through her whole life. She
worked and was patient to wait for that change to happen. She also didn't force her
growth to happen, she let it happen. Letting other things change her allowed her to be
the person she is at the end of the book
- Michael: depressing book, makes me want to figure things out and to look more deeply
and it causes me anxiety about what i am doing and how much fun I am having wow this
i so much fuin yea this is so much fun In need to stop and do something eklse
- Shawn: I wonder what correlation there is to intelligence and a rough childhood. What
I've noticed is that children that have had the most physically enduring childhood,
without traumatic brain injuries, are also generally more intelligent. In this context, Tara
and her two other siblings that became Doctors all suffered physical pain, but what takes
them apart was how much more neural damage that her other siblings suffered. I think
there is a correlation between intelligence and how close to (without going over) the
limit they have been pushed physically.
- Also education is very important to becoming self reliant.
- But this is what I have wondered about throughout the entire book.
5. Tara’s parents became more and more relaxed about what technological tools they could use. The
first example of this is her father getting a TV to witness Y2K and, especially after her mother’s
homeopathy medicine became a thriving business, they started to spend more time and money on
frivolous things like cell phones. What effect did the business have on Tara’s parents? Or is it a result of
evolving and improving society that forced them into grandeur?
- Seems like Gene forgot who he was before when he got more money
- Ditches his previous ways of life
- They seem to morph reality into what they want it to be
- Change their beliefs as they figure out what they like and as they become more
and more prosperous
- Ultimately values the convenience of new technology over staying true to their
beliefs
- Shows that they have some sort of potential to change, but are very resistant to
it
- Niagara falls moment
- Bi-polar changes, sometimes happy about it, and then go back to being angry

Summary:
Tara's growth is shown throughout this book as she begins to live outside of her
family, gaining independence and a sense of self. Her education helps her build an
understanding of the world around her, giving her a world to live in outside of the
one her family built. Her education is important to her growth because it forces her
to take a step back and observe her situation from an outside point of view. As she
does this, she begins to notice things that we as readers notice. Her growth changed
her perspectives of her parents and her relationships with them.