Rodriguez Post #1

My experiences with schooling and education has very little in common compared to Rodriguez’ schooling as a child. When I was young I was almost the opposite of a “scholarship boy,” not too extreme of anything but I just never got good grades and usually needed extra help with something. Coming from that side of the spectrum it almost seems foolish for Rodriguez to be upset he is a scholarship boy. But this then raises the question of what aspect of the scholarship boy is he upset with? Its maybe because it distances him from his family. Maybe its because he just reading all day not applying his knowledge, or because his life outside of books is quite minimalistic. Rodriguez writes this as he speaks of the scholarship boy, “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”(343). Rodriguez does not like how his passion is kind of what is pulling the family apart and he cannot really spend time with them, but this is the sacrifice it takes to be great at anything. He should be more disappointed in the fact that he rarely uses his intelligence in everyday situations and to learn how to deal with people because his everyday situation is a book.

The term scholarship has taken on different meaning since the days Rodriguez was in school but still hold some of its true qualities. Today scholarships are acquired through means besides academics, although academics is still the major role. The ideology of a scholarship is to award outstanding or extra effort, the difficult part of being a “scholarship boy” is keeping the scholarship because now a “scholarship boy” is expected to continue to be a “scholarship boy.” This pressure of the “scholarship boy” is what grows in Rodriguez’ mind, he has been told he has a gift and needs to continue to use it and there is almost pressure to be good at it. With this pressure to perform he realizes that it is what is distancing him from his life previous a scholarship, or life before a distinguished talent. I would never be the one to label myself as a “scholarship boy,” especially in the academic sense Rodriguez means, but I have been granted one. After reading “The Achievement of Desire,” the one think I could agree most with is the fact that two worlds will always exist for a “scholarship boy” in one way or another, and to be able to keep these two worlds functioning efficiently, even though Rodriguez did not like what it did to his family chemistry, is what it takes to be a “scholarship boy.”