Hillbilly Elegy

who dropped out—mostly for medical
reasons—served to reinforce the
worthiness of the challenge.
Every time the drill instructor
screamed at me and I stood proudly;
every time I thought I’d fall behind
during a run and kept up; every time I
learned to do something I thought
impossible, like climb the rope, I came a
little closer to believing in myself.
Psychologists call it “learned
helplessness” when a person believes,
as I did during my youth, that the choices
I made had no effect on the outcomes in
my life. From Middletown’s world of
small expectations to the constant chaos
of our home, life had taught me that I had