Just over a decade ago, Nikhil Goyal was a disillusioned high school student growing up on Long Island. He found his classes boring and irrelevant. Fellow students seemed less interested in actually learning than in getting good standardized test scores to earn entry into elite colleges. Instead of stewing in his discontent, Goyal began to research the foundations of the public education system, as well as alternative, progressive models of schooling. That research became material for his first book, One Size Does Not Fit All: A Student’s Assessment of School, published in 2012 when Goyal was just 17. The book made a splash, garnering mentions in the Washington Post and Forbes and praise from educational policy heavyweights including Howard Gardner and Diane Ravitch. Goyal eschewed the traditional college path, instead enrolling at Goddard College in Plainfield, an innovative, experimental institution that allowed him to design his own course of study. While there, he found time to write another book, Schools on Trial: How Freedom and Creativity Can Fix Our Educational Malpractice, published in 2016. After graduating from Goddard, Goyal went on to earn his master’s degree and PhD at the University of Cambridge in England and to work as a senior policy adviser to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Now 28, Goyal lives in Burlington and served this fall as a lecturer in the University of Vermont’s sociology department. In August, Goyal released his latest book, Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty, a detailed ethnography based on almost a decade of reporting. In it, Goyal chronicles the struggles of Ryan, Giancarlos and Emmanuel, three Puerto Rican teenagers living in Kensington, the poorest neighborhood in Philadelphia. Through the stories of the teens and their families, Goyal shines a light on the ways in which growing up in poverty affects every facet of a person’s life, including their ability to succeed in school. Live to See the Day was recently named a Best Book of 2023 by the New Yorker. Goyal spoke with Seven Days about his background, his books and what it was like to work for Sanders. You wrote One Size Does Not Fit All when you were in high school. What inspired you — and gave you the confidence — to write a book at age 17? I noticed that students were sacrificing their mental health, their well-being, their love of learning, for…