The PRICE of Education

I know it's not on our list of things to do, but I was browsing through our RA book and hooked into "The Achievement of Desire", an intriquing piece by Richard Rodriguez. His story is a retrospective autobiography on how he attained his level of success.

Without retelling the whole story, I will tell you that the part of his story that caught my attention deeply was how, being rised by an immigrant family, he lost his roots and relations with his family in persuit of his quest to be educated. Mr Rodriguez was embarrassed by his parents' heavy spanish accent and their lack of literary knowledge. As he became more and more educated, he distanced himself further and further away from his family and heritage. It wasn't until many years and awards into his adulthood that he recogized the loneliness of a scholar, hiding and living within the pages of someone elses ideas and concepts. He admits that his quest for education was mostly and merely a mimicing and parroting of others, and that he rarely, if ever, had a thought of his own but waited for others to tell him what to read and then what to think about it. He joined a literary community who met together in a museum and studied or read...but never conversed and built relationships with each other. This gave him an urgent yearning to "go home".

I found Rodriguez' writing just a little difficult to read, sometimes rereading the same sentence several times. Although he has a fabulous literary style, it's just a little upside down for me. I really enjoyed his story and just wanted to share, I guess.

NOW...to the real assignment!