Hillbilly Elegy

banks? I thought they were all the same.
Shop around for a loan? I felt so lucky to
even get a loan that I was ready to pull
the trigger immediately. The Marine
Corps demanded that I think strategically
about these decisions, and then it taught
me how to do so.
Just as important, the Marines
changed the expectations that I had for
myself. In boot camp, the thought of
climbing the thirty-foot rope inspired
terror; by the end of my first year, I
could climb the rope using only one arm.
Before I enlisted, I had never run a mile
continuously. On my last physical fitness
test, I ran three of them in nineteen
minutes. It was in the Marine Corps