In Richard Rodriguez's essay, "The Achievement of Desire," he recalls the difficulties of balancing life as a thriving student and the life in a working class family. Growing up, Rodriguez was the exception to the stereotypical student coming from an immigrant/working class family. From an early age, he prospered in academics. He made education his top priority. Rodriguez spent time with his books rather than with family or friends. Initially, this approach put him at the top of his class, but as time went by he became an outsider both at home and in school. Rodriguez writes about similarities with the "scholarship boy." The scholarship boy is a reference from Richard Hoggart's book, The Uses of Literacy. The scholarship boy comes from two cultural extremes. He is from a working class family but excels in school, which is unlikely of him. When he starts school, he is thrown into a drastically different environment. He must learn to completely separate the two worlds and until he does, he will not be successful. Rodriguez's experiences are very much the same to those of the scholarship boy. He feels such close ties to the scholarship boy that he starts to refer to himself as one throughout his essay. Rodriguez states, "I was a "scholarship boy, a certain kind of scholarship boy" (Rodriguez 339). The scholarship boy is a friction point between two worlds, just as Rodriguez is. The two worlds are the working class and the educational elite. Upon entering school, Rodriguez knew how important achieving an education was. His parents knew how hard it was to get by with very little schooling, so they stressed the importance of education to their children. With this concept in mind, Rodriguez pushed through the obstacles put before him to become one of the best in his class. The problem with this was that in attempting to better himself, he separated himself from his home environment and lost all sense of self. According to Rodriguez, "his academic success distances him from a life he loved, even from his own memory of himself" (341). Rodriguez explains in "The Achievement of Desire," how he lost the connection he had with his family while pursuing education. He also wrote about how he did not take advantage of his parents' advice pertaining to their native culture. He was so obsessed with the idea of becoming a scholarship boy that he lost himself along the way. Towards the end of his piece, Richard Rodriguez realizes that his education is nothing if he does not have someone to share it with. Education cannot be the complete meaning of life and Rodriguez learned that the hard way. Yes, he did push through every obstacle placed in front of him to achieve success, but by the end of all his hard work he feels alone. Rodriguez claims, "I yearned for a time when I had not been so alone" (354). He feels so alone that he cannot enjoy what he has accomplished. He does not feel the need to pursue his education any further. Rodriguez returns home to his family in hopes of gaining back time lost. At the end of his essay, he states that he has reached the "end of education. Rodriguez himself writes, "thereby achieved what had eluded me for so long; the end of education" (355). The essence of Rodriguez's statem