Ingrid Illustrated

  Education is not something to be taken for granted. In my book club book, Educated , in many other book club books based on the blog posts I have read recently, and in real life, this is a common theme.  Many of us, myself included, are guilty of taking our education for granted. It’s easy, considering most of us haven’t had any extreme circumstances in our lives. For most of us, we wake up 10 minutes before class every morning, hop onto our zoom calls, leave our cameras off, and scroll through our phones while our teachers’ voices drone on and on. School feels like a chore, a burden, and a single day off feels like a miracle.  Or the complete opposite. We work extremely hard at school, taking every single AP course there is to take, studying hours and hours each day (especially with AP exams this week), feeling more and more validated with each academic success. Nothing else matters. But still, in this case, school feels a weight on our shoulders we cannot wait to be l...

  In chapter 21 of Educated by Tara Westover, Tara takes a few pills for the first time ever, for her earache. At first, she doubts their ability entirely because her mother always said that medical drugs have a special kind of poison in them that never leaves you for the rest of your life. However, I sense that after a while, hope started to trickle into her and even disbelief as her earache was gone after mere minutes. I do think that these pills genuinely worked for her because she actually tried to get them not to work (although they still showed to relieve her pain), but that got me thinking about something I am pretty familiar with: the placebo effect.  The placebo effect is getting used more and more in clinical trials, but it can also be seen in our everyday lives. It happens when the body produces a real response to a fake “treatment”. In clinical trials, the number of people who believe their pain is getting better when they haven’t actually received the drug they w...

  After reading and discussing the first 150 or so pages of Educated by Tara Westover, I’ve been thinking a lot about the significance of Tara’s point of view. Unlike other stories, the story of her childhood would be extremely different coming from the eyes of any other family member. I say this because Tara doesn’t necessarily narrate her childhood adoringly, she remembers most of it in a negative light. For example, Tara’s view of how suffocating and harsh her family’s practice of religion was, would probably be described from her father’s point of view as devoted and proud. Also, Tara’s guilt and hopefulness of going to college may be seen as betrayal from her siblings. So in reality, we will never know if events actually occurred the way they are described in the book or not. Tara even recognizes this herself. At the bottom of a few of the pages, she leaves little footnotes warning us that this was just her recollection of how the event occurred, and that her siblings each ha...

Yesterday, You had the worst day of your life, nothing seemed to go your way. Yesterday, You made a mistake in class, everybody laughed when you didn’t know the answer. Yesterday, You made a turn at the wrong traffic light, making you late for everything you had planned. Yesterday, You spilled coffee on your best white sweater, a stain that will never forgive you. Yesterday, You rewatched your favorite movie, crying and laughing along like you’ve never seen it before. Yesterday, You spent time with your best friends, laughing until you were clutching your stomachs in pain. Yesterday, You baked blueberry muffins with your grandma, a memory you want to hold onto forever. Yesterday, You had the best day of your life, everything seemed to go your way. Yesterday, You were someone you will always be, and never be again.