Scholarship Boy By Richard Rodriguez

Everyone dreams of being the perfect student by being extremely smart, and having the ability of wanting to complete assignments, read some interesting books, and studying to pass every test. In the “Scholarship Boy” this boy illustrates that being too book smart can affect one’s personal life. Rodriguez describes himself as a good student, but a troubled son. According to him he is a troubled son because he is a “child who cannot forget that his academic success distances him from a life he loved, even from his own memory of himself.”(19) When he was younger he was not educated and he accepted his parents the way they were as uneducated, Mexican immigrants. Once he started getting an education he realized that they were different from

Rodriguez is jealous of other students’ parents because some of them are more educated then his own. He is also embarrassed by how his parents have an accent when they talk. One day he decided to walk home with a fellow fourth grade student and this student announced that his parents read to him the story Winnie the Pooh, every night. Rodriguez was jealous because reading is what he enjoyed to do every second that he got to do it. His parents did not see reading and education the same way that Rodriguez did. He was upset that his parents did not bond over the same materials that he

They were not genius’s so therefore could not discuss the same material that he was interested in. His mother did attempt to bond with him by asking for his input on what book she would enjoy to read in her spare time. Rodriguez picked a specific one and gave it to her. Once he realized that she only read a couple of the beginning pages he freaked out and was furious at her. Maybe his mother had an explanation on why she did not finish the book, but Rodriguez did not bother to discuss it with her instead he isolated himself in his room. His mother attempted to have a relationship with him by asking how his book was or how his courses at school were going. Instead of communicating with her he would just ignore and barely answer. His parent tried to create a relationship but all he did was push them away time after time