FINAL DRAFT 11 CRACK CRACK

Torturing myself eventually led nowhere so I decided to switch gears and ignore the concept of my changing family dynamic altogether. Was there no hope for us to succeed? Did they just not care about us anymore? I ran through these thoughts through my mind until I drove myself mad. To me, my parent’s attitude made me feel like they had given up on raising us. I was confused by my parents’ change in behavior, but I didn’t question it because my brother was over the moon that he was “free”. After raising us with an iron fist for so many years my parents fizzled out and adopted a shockingly laissez-faire attitude. But after so much headache my parents were worn down. In the end, Stephanie got married with the support of both families and Jackie earned her diploma. Then, a letter sent home saying that my other sister was on academic probation at college added fuel to the fire. New drama emerged as she became engaged and conflict erupted between my parents and the in-laws. This was the first time I was validated by someone outside of my family, and I felt the hunger for more.īy the time I entered middle school, my oldest sister had graduated from college and was living back at home. After talking to my concerned parents, my teacher explained to me that the reason she stopped calling on me was because she knew I always had the correct answer and she wanted to give the other kids a chance. Earlier that day, I had told my parents my second grade teacher stopped calling on me in class. One time my parents walked in on me crying while sitting cross-legged and holding my hand straight up in the air. A child with night terrors has no recollection of what happens the night before, so I was always acting on a subconscious level.

I would cry and scream until my dad said that he was sorry.

If my dad hurt my feelings I would wake up the house that night with my piercing shrieks. In the first and second grade, I started having night terrors. My sister was shocked that at the age of one I was able to feel embarrassment. Immediately, I started crying and would not stop despite their comforting hugs. Then one time they put me in an outfit and started laughing at me. My sisters used to dress me up when I was a baby and gush over how cute I was. An eight-year-old probably should not have to deal with this kind of pressure, but it was all I knew.Īt an early age, my family knew that I was sensitive to others’ opinions of me. 4, 5, 20.” He would scold me if I got an answer wrong and I would leave his office in tears on a regular basis. In the third grade, my father would drill me every day on multiplication tables.

FINAL DRAFT 11 CRACK CRACK

Therefore, the second time around my father decided to crack the whip early on. My other sister, however, was reckless despite my parents’ authoritarian parenting style and preferred playing outside to music lessons and doing her homework. She excelled in school, played the violin, and was the ultimate big sister. I was born when my sisters Stephanie and Jackie were 11 and 7, and my brother Alex was born the subsequent year. My story is about the perfectionist, a girl who attempts to achieve impossible standards because of her parent’s own imperfections.Įveryone likes to joke that my parents had two sets of kids: my two older sisters and my brother and me. However, looking back on my experiences through Rodriguez’s lens, I find that my story is not so distant from that of the scholarship boy. My initial thought is that there is no way I am the same as this cold and detached man. The school system molded him into the scholarship boy, a successful student who endures the lonely silence that comes from reading. In his essay “Achievement of Desire”, Rodriguez describes how he assimilated into American culture by giving up the bond with his family. Sitting in a college classroom, I am asked by my professor to relate my life story to that of Richard Rodriguez, a self proclaimed “scholarship boy”.

Final draft 11 crack