Hillbilly Elegy
decisions were coming about my future. All of my friends planned to go to college; that I had such motivated friends was due to ...
figured I’d do the same. I scored well enough on the SAT to overcome my earlier bad grades, and I knew that the only two schools ...
concluding that I could purchase a decent home in Middletown with the debt I’d incur to go to college. We hadn’t actually starte ...
well in college required grit, and I had far too little of it. My high school record left much to be desired: dozens of absences ...
own bills. I’d never done any of those things. But I knew that I wanted more out of my life. I knew that I wanted to excel in co ...
hillbilly, I considered heading to the Middle East to kill terrorists. But the prospect of military service—the screaming drill ...
told me I’d make very little money and I might even go to war. “But they’ll teach you about leadership, and they’ll turn you int ...
newest war. I thought about the GI Bill and how it would help me trade indebtedness for financial freedom. I knew that, most of ...
weeks later, as the Iraq crisis turned into the Iraq war, I signed my name on a dotted line and promised the Marine Corps the fi ...
on in the world, you’ll get your head blown off.” “Don’t you want to be around for Lindsay’s kids?” “I’m worried, and I don’t wa ...
that I’d fail to make the cut. I hardly worried about those things. But when Mom, Lindsay, and Aunt Wee drove me to the bus that ...
Island, South Carolina, an angry drill instructor greeted my group as we disembarked from the plane. He ordered us onto a bus; a ...
can.” The drill instructor, overhearing my two extra lines of conversation, asked sarcastically whether I’d made enough time “fo ...
extended thoughts on what was wrong with the world in some and few- sentence streams of consciousness in others. Most of all, Ma ...
the letters I received from my family. Many of them shed an interesting light on the home I left behind. A letter from Mom, aski ...
Terry,” she starts, referencing a friend of hers, “was arrested on a probation violation and sent to prison. So they are all doi ...
than anything else. Almost all of the letters I sent home asked her to “kiss the babies and tell them that I love them.” Cut off ...
from Leslie County, Kentucky. He talks like he’s from Jackson. I was telling him how much bullshit it was that Catholics got all ...
from me, she would call my aunt or sister, demanding that someone come to her house immediately and interpret my chicken scratch ...
month into my training, I had a nasty exchange with a drill instructor, who took me aside for a half hour, forcing me to alterna ...
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