Blog Post #1: Rodriguez

Kate Kernien

I can connect to Rodriguez in some instances where he explains what it is to be a “scholarship boy.” When I was in high school, I spent a lot of my time studying and doing homework, whereas my friends did not take homework as seriously. I was in all the advanced classes, while my friends were in classes that I had taken the year before. They were never in any of my classes, which left our only time to socialize at school to lunch time in the cafeteria. I slowly grew apart from some friends because we began to lose similarities. While they were joining plays and musicals, I was doing my math homework and studying for upcoming exams. By senior year, I had become closer to those that also cared about doing well in school. Rodriguez eventually isolates himself from his family because of the time he spends on schoolwork, “The boy needs to spend more and more time studying, each night enclosing himself in the silence permitted and required by intense concentration. He takes his first step toward academic success, away from his family (434).” He puts his schoolwork before everything, including his family. This is the decision that leads to his success in school and ultimately leads to the dissatisfaction he has with his parents and the life he created for himself.

Although the “scholarship boy” and I do relate in the fact that we both became isolated from people in our quest for academic success, I was not separated from my family as Rodriquez was. My parents were the ones that supported me throughout my academic career. They pushed me to try harder and challenge myself. When I would have days where I would doubt myself, my mom and dad were there to remind me that I was a smart woman who can do anything I put my mind to. I was raised in a household where I was continually faced with things that would test my knowledge. We discuss religion, politics, and other topics at the dinner table. I am proud of my parents, unlike Rodriguez. “I was embarrassed by their lack of education (436).” I cannot relate to not being able to have conversations with my parents about things I learn in school. I discuss things that I learn in my classes with my parents all the time. Rodriguez could never talk to his parents about the books he was reading because they were never able to understand them. He eventually gave up on talking to them about his school work and the books he was reading.

Being a “scholarship boy” has caused Rodriguez to lose the connections he had with his family. Schoolwork gradually isolated him from making memories with his family, which in the end made him become nostalgic for the life he once had. This causes Rodriguez to grow to want more from his life other than books. “I yearned for the time when I had not been so alone. I became impatient with books. I wanted experience more immediate (448).” He may be academically “successful,” but by trying to achieve this, he lost the other part of his life, his family. This separates me from the “scholarship boy,” I never lost my parents throughout my pursuit of academic success because I never was embarrassed by them and never felt guilty for trying to learn the most I could.