The Achievement Of Desire, By Richard Rodriguez

In Richard Rodriguez essay “Scholarship Boy,” he explores his past, now as a thirty year old man, and gives his readers a very well painted picture of what a scholarship boy truly is. Rodriguez mentions that from an early age he had put a boundary between his school and home life. However, it is worth mentioning that in his younger years he almost seemed to attempt to force both lives together. He mentions how he would constantly correct his parent’s grammatical errors, or tell them what he had learned in an effort to hurt their feelings. In this way he had taken on a superior attitude towards his parents and did his best to shame them into becoming the type of parents he had yearned for; the parental figures he had come to find in his teachers.

In “Scholarship Boy” by Richard Rodriguez, many issues are presented regarding his success in comparison to his cultural background. Although his academic successes were prevalent among his peers and family, he faced criticism for his strive to excel academically. Much of this criticism was received from those closest to him, his siblings. Rodriguez shows us through his triumphant story that through adversity, one can still excel.

Rodriguez does not discuss how his obsession with education influenced him internally. There is no further explanation of the emotions of a scholarship student. Rodriguez is successful in uncovering the mind of an overachieving student. However, many overachieving students encounter an overwhelming amount of stress while attempting to reach perfection. The student’s need for perfection begins consuming every thought and ends in constant self-evaluation. The obsession with learning causes the student to question everything that they do.

As a scholarship boy, Rodriguez received many years of schooling and kept moving away from family as the time in education passed. This was what Rodriguez chosen before he actually realized his long for past. Once he admitted his nostalgia, he chose to physically leave academy and back home to stay with his family. But no sooner, he suspect his return and finally understand “If, because of my schooling, I had grown culturally separated from my parents, my education finally had given me ways of speaking and caring about that fact.” (Rodriguez, 532). At the end of his essay, he summarized his gain from his schooling, which is ‘Ways of speaking and caring’ himself or, in other word, discover the true behind reality. His discovery process of ‘ways of speaking and caring’ include his relationship with his family and teacher, experience of reading, and class shifted as he move from elementary school through college and graduate school to his career as a teacher and a writer.

For middle and lower class citizens educations seems like the primary way to succeed in life. Personally believe that my last statement is true. Richard Rodriguez also believed that and wrote about his experience with education. In his essay “The Achievement of Desire” he discusses things such as;How his parents are Mexican immigrants, barely speak English, and had little to no education. His essay hit home for me because I have experienced similar things in my life but not exactly the same. He also talks about how he felt that the only way of leaving behind the image of being uneducated and at the bottom of the ladder is to educate himself. So that’s what he did. Unfortunately during his educational years he forgot where he came from and abandoned his family and culture. He also discusses Hoggart’s essay “the use of Literacy” and his educational figure who is snobby know as the “scholarship boy”. Even though Rodriguez agreed and seen himself as this “scholarship boy” he knew that he wasn’t a perfect example of it. “The scholarship boy’s parents are poor and are uneducated as are my own”(341) he says but there is a difference him and the perfect scholarship boy. He noticed that he had pushed away his family but the scholarship boy is too blind to see that and only wants to succeed in life. You see myself in Rodriguez but I hope to stop the dissociation from my family and culture before it’s too late.

In elementary we are constantly encouraged to dream big and achieve even higher. We are expected to choose any occupation and follow its clear pathway to success. Nonetheless the reality of the story is that getting there is most often if not always difficult. As children we are not told of the obstacles we will soon encounter and the disappoint we will discover along the way. Only too late do we realize that the pathway to success will be a lonely and at times conflicting one. Richard Rodriguez an American writer discusses in his autobiography, The Achievement of Desire the sacrifices and lost he endured in the process of becoming a scholarship boy. Rodriguez's feelings of nostalgia at the end of his journey to success allowed him to see what he had so greatly attempted to ignore. The fact that education had

In Richard Rodriguez “Scholarship Boy” the audience notices several tensions throughout his experiences; and how they affect his upbringing to become the man he is today. Rodriguez’s two most important levels of tension were, his homelife home where he separates himself from his family while feeling a form of anger towards them. Rodriguez distances himself from his peers despite his educational success, nevertheless he thrives in his studies in the classroom. Since he is so dedicated on his studies he lacks time to interact with them because his free time is spent reading.

With the help of “The Loss of The Creator” by Walker Percy and “Achievement of Desire” by Richard Rodriguez, readers are able easily see what makes Rodriguez a common student. Rodriguez lives the life of a common student, and it is not until later in life realizes how much he needs to change.

Students dream of being doctors, lawyers, and other honorable careers but they fail to recognize the work and dedication it takes. Inside of the purpose lies the main claim that states “There is no guarantee that students will prioritize academic learning at the core of their institutional demands.” This claim is stating that although Arum and Roksa, along with others, are trying to impress on educators to create a higher quality of education, students still have to put in the effort to gain the level of education desired. The work they put into their studies will determine what knowledge they get out in return. Arum and Roksa give many

In today’s society, the words “education” and a “better life” fit hand and hand with the other. The desire to create a higher quality lifestyle and the thirst for knowledge is a recurring theme in The Achievement of Desire. Much like Richard Rodriguez, my parents were not native to America and therefore, learning a new language and adapting to the culture was an indefinite struggle. Growing up, many Americans perceived my family and I as “too Chinese” and in the eyes of the Chinese, I was “too American”; this concept was only intensified after my trip to China in 2011. The addition of Western-style education in the household of a second generation American family unintentionally alienates the family members who participate in the schooling

In Rodriguez’s essay “Achievement of Desire”, Rodriguez makes a conclusion to his own life with all the experience he have. In the last part, he mentions “If, because of my schooling I had grown culturally separate from my parents, my education finally had given me ways of speaking and caring about that fact” (pg. 560). Which means that his gave him the ways to how education separates him with his family. This is indeed the main focus of the essay. First, it is the separation of his family his deep down feelings. Second, is what he feels regarding to his family and the way that he is not proud of his family and parents. Third, is when he sees what sacrifices he has done in order to be at the place he is right not and what he has gained from those sacrifices.

Decisions are part of anyone’s life. We are driven by the choices we make—even when we think we are not making a choice, we have already decided to make ourselves believe that we are not making one. Although decisions are an inevitable part of our lives, most times, we are solely responsible for our own decisions and their consequences. Decisions reflect every aspect of our lives: thoughts, values, what is and what is not important, who we are, and who we want to be. In Richard Rodriguez’s essay, “The Achievement of Desire,” part of his autobiography, Hunger of Memory and published in Ways Of Reading: An Anthology for Writers, the author expresses the complexity of decision making by describing how early life choices shaped and directed him

The aspects of an individual’s ability to give and take agency can be explored in various aspects from everyday structures to within different essays. Agency is an individual’s ability to act or rebel in order to regain power. This is explored in depth within Michel Foucault’s essay, “Panopticism”, which focuses on power relations within Panoptic structures. Foucault explains that the Panopticon structure is “at the periphery, an annular building; at the center, a tower” (184). Essentially, this means that there is a large tower in the center of the structure surrounded by individual cells.

Jim Costello was born in Rochester, New York, and when he was a young boy his passion for art showed (Jim Costello). Costello studied at the Ecole St. Luc art school during high school, and then continued his art career in college. The following years of teaching, Costello moved his family to northwest Virginia, and started to paint the landscapes and the different scenery around his house. In Costello art work you can tell that he is a modern painter because he uses different shapes and bright colors to bring the viewers eyes directly to his paintings. The title of his show called “Dynamics of Desire: The Evocative Works of Jim Costello” make it seem as if his painting will have some type of sexual content (Jim Costello). Although his painting displays naked women, he is trying to capture the spirt and energy that animates the Shenandoah Valley. This explains why in many of his painting there is a naked woman and a landscape of the valley because he is trying to display mother nature in his work. He does not finish his paintings in one setting, he does them over a period of years because his art work is in a very large scale.

Immigrants into the United States often perceive education as the principal method for their children to attain a better life than they have been able to provide for them. The immigrants have dreams and hopes of their children becoming successful and working in better conditions that they had to endure in order to survive. However for the children, accomplishing the immense dreams their parents hold for them can be challenging. While striving to obtain an education, the children face many cultural clashes because the ideas they learn while in school or the process of attaining the education goes against many of the cultural or family values they have been raised with. This is an issue that is iterated in many texts by Latina writers