Educated: A Memoir

Westover tells of a new ally at BYU: the bishop at her church. A week into her second spring semester, she was called to a mandatory meeting with the bishop because he had heard that she was refusing dates with men from church. The bishop asked her questions about her family and upbringing, which prompted Westover to reflect on her experiences with puberty and sexuality. She realized she associated the word “whore,” which she heard so frequently growing up, with herself. She remembered Shawn accusing her of having a reputation around town and Gene believing that she was pregnant when she was 15. Through that experience, Westover learned a new meaning of the word “whore”: “It was not that I had done something wrong so much as that I existed in the wrong way. There was something impure in the fact of my being” (205).

Westover met with the bishop throughout the semester. When she mentioned her financial struggles to him, he encouraged her to apply for a federal grant or accept charity from the church, but Westover refused both. Frustrated, the bishop made her at least promise that she would not work for her father that summer.

Westover did as the bishop asked. When she got home to Buck’s Peak for the summer, she got her job back at the grocery store in town and did her best to avoid Shawn. Although she saved up some money working all summer, she still returned to BYU in the fall with a mountain of bills she could not pay. Two weeks into the semester, she got a blinding pain in her jaw from a sore tooth that had been rotting for years. She went to the dentist, who told her the repair would cost $1,400. She called home, and her dad said they would lend her the money if she agreed to work for him next summer. She hung up on them.

The bishop wrote Westover a check for the dental work instead, insistent that she must not leave school over medical bills. After Christmas, Westover was still having financial issues, and the bishop again urged her to apply for a federal grant. She finally filled out the paperwork and sent it in. At that time, Westover realized that she considered BYU her home, not Idaho. When she told other students she was from Idaho, she realized she had never “uttered the words” (212) until she had left home. 

Westover remembers the first semester that she was able to thrive in school. She got the federal grant she had applied for and had money left over. For the first time in months, she was able to fully focus in her classes instead of worrying about her economic position.

She took Psychology 101 that semester. When the professor began describing bipolar disorder, Westover thought: “He’s describing Dad” (213). The class discussion prompted Westover to research a story she grew up hearing about: the standoff between federal agents and the Weaver family in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, that Gene had obsessed about during her youth. Westover always thought the government had shot members of the Weaver family because they refused to put their kids in public school. Only then did she learn that it was because the Weavers were white supremacists. At first, she believed her father lied to her about what had happened to the Weavers, but then she remembered his paranoia, mania, delusions of grandeur, and belief that his family would be persecuted. Her research prompted her to write an angry paper about the effects that parents with bipolar disorder have on their children for her psychology class. She realized that, though her father’s illness was not his fault, the rest of the family had suffered because of it.

At the end of the semester, Westover stayed in Utah to avoid seeing her father. She decided to reject his way of life and try being normal instead. She started going to a new church across town and met a boy named Nick. He and Westover immediately became a couple. Although Nick was honest and open with her, Westover never mentioned her family, intentionally hiding her past from him.

Toward the end of May, Westover got a bad case of strep and mono and went to a doctor, who gave her penicillin and antibiotics. When she got home, she called her mother to confess that she was taking penicillin. Two days later, a package arrived with tinctures and essential oils. The note read: “These herbs will flush the antibiotics from your system. Please use them for as long as you insist on taking the drugs. Love you” (220). Westover laughed aloud, incredulous at her mother’s rush to send her a remedy for the penicillin, but nothing at all for the strep and mono.

That amusement would be short lived, unfortunately. The next morning, Audrey called to tell her that Gene had been in an accident. If Westover hurried, Audrey told her, she might make it home in time to say goodbye.