Tonya Mosley

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Nesper.

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Roberta Shorrock directs the show.

With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.

This is Fresh Air.

I'm Tanya Mosley.

College is often a time to figure out who we are, to fall in love for the first time, to experiment, to fail, to question what we believe.

But for Malala Yousafzai, it was different.

She spent her college years experiencing all of these things under scrutiny and 24-hour security.

When she was 15, Malala survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban, a gunshot to the head while riding home on a school bus.

But long before that, she'd been standing up to them, demanding the right for girls to go to school in her hometown of Mingora and Pakistan's Swat Valley.

The Taliban had taken control, closing schools, banning women from public life, and brutally punishing anyone who resisted.

After the shooting, Malala's life changed overnight.

She became a symbol of resistance, praised, politicized, and picked apart.

While the world saw an unshakable young woman with a message, Malala was also a teenager, undergoing surgeries to reconstruct what was destroyed by the Taliban, experiencing post-traumatic stress, and navigating others' expectations of who she should be.

Her new memoir, Finding My Way, reveals the person beyond the symbol.