I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola boola and all of that. Where else but in prison could I have attacked my ignorance by being able to study intensely sometimes as much as fifteen hours a day? (231).
This statement has a bit of truth to it. Because I am in college, I know that there are clubs, parties, and many other activities that Malcolm X claims are distracting. Yet this is where I find it a bit controversial. College has so many opportunities for people, and it is ultimately, up to each individual to take advantage of it. One can be just as successful with distractions around them as one who has none. This brings me to another highly motivated person, Richard Rodriguez.
In Rodriguez's "Achievement of Desire," the image of success is blurred. Rodriguez is inspired by his teacher's remarks on his progress, and becomes a bit obsessed with trying to impress them. He calls himself the "scholarship boy," which he defines as being a student of meager resources, coming from a predominately uneducated family, who battles to break the bindings of mediocrity and become an educated man. He states that "The kind of allegiance the young student [scholarship boy] might have given his mother and father only days earlier, he transfers to the teacher, the new figure of authority"(199). He compares this definition with that of Richard Hoggart that "[The scholarship boy] tends to make a father-figure of his form-master" (199). Rodriguez determines his success by the remarks of his teachers. His role in his family grows farther apart as he begins to flaunt his academic success before his parents, who are not as educated. .
The enthusiasm I felt in second-grade classes I flaunted before both my parents. The docile, obedient student came home a shrill and precocious son who insisted on correcting and teaching his parents with the remark: "My teacher told us.
