Hillbilly Elegy

effectively placed you in direct
competition with your classmates, our
dean asked us during orientation to
follow our passions, wherever they
might lead, and not worry so much about
grades. Our first four classes were
graded on a credit/no credit basis, which
made that easy. One of those classes, a
constitutional law seminar of sixteen
students, became a kind of family for me.
We called ourselves the island of misfit
toys, as there was no real unifying force
to our team—a conservative hillbilly
from Appalachia, the supersmart
daughter of Indian immigrants, a black
Canadian with decades’ worth of street
smarts, a neuroscientist from Phoenix, an