The achievement of desire (Phuong Nguyen)

The article “The achievement of desire” by Richard Rodriguez points out a very new opinion towards education, which focuses on disadvantages of education. According to the writer, one must sacrifice many things for being successful, and he did.

First of all, he lost his respect for his parents. As he was a second-grade student, he was very proud because his teacher told that he had lost “all trace of a Spanish accent”, which upset his mother. He even tried to pick out every simple grammatical mistake of his parents. Moreover, he “pried the textbook” out of his father’s hands just because his parent couldn’t help him with his homework.

Second, Rodriguez became family’s joke because of his passion on reading. He wanted to impress his teachers, so he read all the books that they recommended. He read anywhere, at anytime he could, even in a closet or when he was supposed to be playing outside. Reading made him cut off himself from family.

The writer knew that his relationship with family members was loosed. However, he accepted that and didn’t want to change it. He’d prefer to sacrifice love with family for good education. He believed that education could give him good chance to escape from working-class, from his family. That’s why he chose to go to Stanford for college, which is very far from his home.

The writer brought out a very new idea of success and its cost. In my opinion, success’s cost varies from one person to another. To a person from working-class like the writer, it was family relationship and his respect to his parents. To a person from upper class, it is time and effort they make. To international students like us, who leave home to a foreign country in hope of better job in future, the cost can be love or friendship. In addition, I think that the time he realized his mistake was too late. Although he was educated very well in school, he didn’t know he had to respect his parents no matter where they were from. They worked hard for him to go to school, but what they received from him? He was an outstanding student, but a bad son.