Blog Post #1: Rodriguez

I personally can identify with Rodriguez's experiences, but not in the classroom. I can relate to his separation from his family due to his schooling by ambitions for swimming and my family's opinions. I started swimming when I was around 11 years old. My sister was around 9 years old and she started before me, but I would go to her practices and meets and I soon became very interested. Therefore I joined and for the first few years I wasn't really into it, many kids my age started when they were much younger and I just didn't fit in. Around when I was 13 my sister quit, but I didn't want to. I slowly started to really love the sport and all the new friends I was making. It got to the point where I would miss family dinners and special events at home to go to practice and swim meets. Around my sophomore year in high school I became what you could call obsessed. I never missed a practice, swam year round, and everything revolved around swimming. Neither of my parents ever played sports so I felt that they didn't understand why something so "in-important" to them, was so important to me. They constantly tried to convince me to miss practice because they knew I was tired or sick or for a special occasion. But it was too important for me to just miss out. I had goals for myself, neither of my parents had gone to college and I knew that I wanted to from a very young age. I knew I would never be able to afford it but I came up with the idea that maybe if I became a fast enough swimmer, I could get a scholarship. Throughout high school I improved greatly and now I am swimming for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and am receiving a scholarship, but I still know that my parents don't understand why I put myself through all the necessary work to be where I am. Maybe nobody in my family is as passionate as I am about sports but they just seem to not get or understand where I got it from.

With this said, I can personally relate to Rodriguez because I have been considered "different" to my family. In the article he writes, "I became bookish, puzzling to all my family. Ambition set me apart," (Rodriguez 431). If I were to re-write this sentence to fit my situation I would say I became devoted, puzzling to all my family. My goals and aspirations for the future of the sport I loved set me apart. Therefore, I can understand Rodriguez, on a level much more then a reader. But, to a level where I know how he felt to be misunderstood and different from what is around you. Eventually he found his place, and I feel that I have found mine. I am studying to be a teacher which has always been a dream of mine, and most importantly I am on a team that I care about and who cares about me, and all sixty of them share the same passion as I do.