Educated

Tyler called one night just as I was getting home from work. He asked if I
was studying for the ACT. “I can’t take the test,” I said. “I don’t know any
math.”
“You’ve got money,” Tyler said. “Buy books and learn it.”
I said nothing. College was irrelevant to me. I knew how my life would
play out: when I was eighteen or nineteen, I would get married. Dad would
give me a corner of the farm, and my husband would put a house on it.
Mother would teach me about herbs, and also about midwifery, which she’d
gone back to now the migraines were less frequent. When I had children,
Mother would deliver them, and one day, I supposed, I would be the
Midwife. I didn’t see where college fit in.
Tyler seemed to read my thoughts. “You know Sister Sears?” he said.
Sister Sears was the church choir director. “How do you think she knows
how to lead a choir?”
I’d always admired Sister Sears, and been jealous of her knowledge of
music. I’d never thought about how she’d learned it.
“She studied,” Tyler said. “Did you know you can get a degree in music?
If you had one, you could give lessons, you could direct the church choir.
Even Dad won’t argue with that, not much anyway.”
Mother had recently purchased a trial version of AOL. I’d only ever used
the Internet at Randy’s, for work, but after Tyler hung up I turned on our
computer and waited for the modem to dial. Tyler had said something about
BYU’s webpage. It only took a few minutes to find it. Then the screen was
full of pictures—of neat brick buildings the color of sunstone surrounded by
emerald trees, of beautiful people walking and laughing, with books tucked
under their arms and backpacks slung over their shoulders. It looked like
something from a movie. A happy movie.
The next day, I drove forty miles to the nearest bookstore and bought a
glossy ACT study guide. I sat on my bed and turned to the mathematics
practice test. I scanned the first page. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to
solve the equations; I didn’t recognize the symbols. It was the same on the
second page, and the third.
I took the test to Mother. “What’s this?” I asked.
“Math,” she said.
“Then where are the numbers?”
“It’s algebra. The letters stand in for numbers.”
“How do I do it?”