It is hard to find a time in my life where I can honesty look back and say that my parents had no influence. Whether it be advice, getting yelled at, or simply help on a math problem, in every situation there is lessons to be learned. My parents have had an insurmountable impact on who I am and the path I have gone down. For some however, like Richard Rodriguez, I cannot say the same. In Rodriguez’s The Achievement of Desire, he tells his story on how his parents and family got in the way path he wanted to pursue. He talks about how he came upon a point during his life where he had to make a decision on what was more important; family or education? For him, these were two mirror opposites. One setting was open-minded while the other was by the books. He chose education and with this decision, he consequently shunned his family from what he was doing and started blaming them. It is mind-blowing to think that the people who mad him who he was and gave him everything that they could were supposedly the reasoning behind the faults in his life. For me, family is everything and they have made the person I am, and have wanted to be. The concept of learning is very opaque. There are different ways to learn and different people to learn from. From Rodriguez’s s standpoint, his parent could not live up to the level of education that he desired. They were not smart enough for his standard as the nuns and teachers that taught him provided more for him. I have grown up my whole life with little help from my parents when it came to education. Seeing as the educational world is continuously changing, the ideas and concepts that my parents learned were outdated and not of any use to me, but that does not me that they of no use. I found that a causal mix of open mined learning along with strict learning is what best suited my abilities. I would have my parents quiz me or help read long during certain readings so could have another perspective on what an answer could be. They knew that they could not teach me what to do so they did whatever they could to help out. If Rodriguez had possibly done the same, he could have found that there was use for his parents instead of deliberately using them as a scapegoat. It is shameful that Rodriguez shunned away his parents because they were extremely proud of what he was accomplishing. The part that bothered him was that his parents were not as smart as him. There was one instance where Rodriguez had won an award and a nun had come up to his parents to congratulate them. “You both must be very proud of Richard,” the nun said. “We are proud of all our children, they sure didn’t get their brains from us” (Rodr