Educated

by Tara Westover

A few days before finals, I sat for an hour with my friend Josh in an empty classroom. He was reviewing his applications for law school. I was choosing my courses for the next semester. “If you were a woman,” I asked, “would you still study law?” Josh didn’t look up. “If I were a woman,” he said, “I wouldn’t want to study it.” “But you’ve talked about nothing except law school for as long as I’ve known you,” I said. “It’s your dream, isn’t it?” “It is,” he admitted. “But it wouldn’t be if I were a woman. Women are made differently. They don’t have this ambition. Their ambition is for children.” He smiled at me as if I knew what he was talking about. And I did. I smiled, and for a few seconds we were in agreement. Then: “But what if you were a woman, and somehow you felt exactly as you do now?” Josh’s eyes fixed on the wall for a moment. He was really thinking about it. Then he said, “I’d know something was wrong with me.”