In this essay, Rodriguez reminisces about his education and the impact it has had on his life. He claims that his success in life is based on how education changed him and separated him from the life he had "before becoming a student."

Throughout this essay, Rodriguez refers to Richard Hogart's book The Uses of Literacy, in which he discovered one of the few mentions of the "scholarship boy" by educational theorists. Rodriguez sees himself in Hogart's descriptions of the scholarship boy, and this has helped him understand his experiences.

Rodriguez expresses concern that he was the type of student who, while making good grades, simply memorized information and never developed his own opinions. Like the "scholarship boy," Rodriguez worked for academic success and denied his past. And also like the "scholarship boy," Rodriguez experienced nostalgia for his past. But he notes that while education created a gulf between him and his parents, education also made it possible to care about that fact and to write about it.

Rodriguez remembers his parents' experiences with education and work. His mother received a high school degree even though, he says, her English was poor. She went to night school, worked as a typist, and was very proud of her excellent spelling ability. His father moved to the United States as a young man, seeking a better life as an engineer. That dream never materialized, and his father worked at a series of unsatisfying low end jobs that, nonetheless, kept the family