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Manholl Li (Andy Li)

Professor Ugalde

ENGL 114B

12 May, 2018

The Rise of Exponential Success

In Mike Rose’s non-fiction memoir, Lives on the Boundary, Rose directs his audience’s

attention to the education system. This education system is established to help students in

developing higher cognitive thinking, professionalism, and fortifying the idea of developing

success. The education system is symbolized as a place where students can obtain the tools they

need to achieve success. Rose explains the difficulties and struggles one will experience while

attending school, whether it be “standard”—high school, middle school, and elementary

school—or higher education, and how students could overcome those barriers. To overcome

these barriers, Rose talks about the importance of establishing relationships and networks of

mentors. Although there is more than one way to achieve success, Rose believes that guidance is

a key factor in one’s journey to success. Therefore, Rose puts at the forefront the notion of

needing a network of mentors to guide one towards achieving one’s dynamic idea of success.

While students in the twenty-first century tend to be unwilling to find mentors during

their undergraduate years due to developing too much pride, believing in being independent at an

early age, and lacking the courage to communicate with professors due to low self-esteem, they

can learn to become successful in today’s economic pressures by learning from Rose’s story of

mentorship. Rose explains how mentors create opportunities for students to develop their

knowledge and create the tools they will need to achieve success. Rose stresses the importance of

“[needing] models, lots of them, to show you how to get at what you don’t know [… and] watch
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out for you” (48). The use of “lots” indicates the idea of multiplicity. Having more than one

mentor can expose one to different perspectives of problem-solving, critical thinking, and more.

He advances the notion of having multiple mentors and their roles by using words that relate to

the idea of guidance, such as, “guide”, “show”, “help” and “watch out” (47—48). Rose uses the

active voice. Using this form of sentence structure, with the use of “you”, develops an ‘invisible’

line that draws the audience towards considering Rose’s demand of setting aside one’s

insecurities and actively searching for potential mentors who will guide one towards success.

One learns multiple ways of accomplishing tasks through the notion of a multiplicity of mentors.

Observing different mentors tackle difficult tasks, as opposed to tackling it on one’s own, allows

an individual to learn how to approach the tasks in a more conventional way. Each mentor’s

unique style of guidance helps one “center [oneself] in [ones] own developing ideas” (48),

creating pathways that guide one towards success by advancing one’s critical thinking. Finding

differently skilled mentors that builds an educational foundation allows people to make the

changes and advancements one needs to achieve their idea of success.

For Rose, it is important to find a network of mentors that “[keeps] the fire going” (58)

because they are the ones who will heavily impact one’s development of success. Rose chose to

use the word “fire” because he wants to use it in a figurative way to emphasize the importance of

maintaining one’s passions and one’s self-will to continue to push through the struggles of higher

education. He explains how one needs multiple mentors to inspire one to be engaged, in both

academia and active application of knowledge, and to develop as an expert in one’s career field.

Rose illustrates this importance by discussing and listing some of the five mentors he gained

throughout his “last two years” at Loyola (58)—“the progressive theologian Paul Hilsdale, the

psychologist Carlo Weber, Father Trame—a historian who had us writing papers and exams
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every other week—the philosophers Gary Schouborg and Norbert Rigali” (58—59)—along with

his previous four mentors. The interconnectedness between the five mentors covers areas of

rhetoric that Rose needed guidance in. Rose believes that mentors that can keep one interested in

academia are important. Thus, he tells the audience to find mentors that offer significant

knowledge towards one’s ideal career by stating the reasons behind his mentor selections. He

gains an array of knowledge in the sense of time and relevance. Rose chose a “progressive […]

psychologist […] historian […and] philosophers” (59) to be a part of his list of mentors because

they all require critical thinking with different contexts in time and in disciplines. A “progressive

theologian” teaches him about new and upcoming ideas while a “historian” teaches him about

the past. A “philosopher” brings to the light the significance of modern time ideas based on

history and a “psychologist” teaches him about one’s thought process through real-life

diagnostics and analysis of recent psychological occurrences and makes those relevant, through

new studies that are based on critical analysis and previous case studies. By becoming successful

in his field of studies, Rose chooses to juxtapose mentors that gives him the opportunity to

strengthen and extend his knowledge of critical thinking towards his major and passion in hopes

that the audience will understand the idea of mentorship guiding one towards success.

The concept Rose argues for, needing mentors to achieve success, can be supported by

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. According to Saul McLeod, a psychologist with a Master’s degree

in research, explains that Maslow’s hierarchy is primarily comprised of physiological needs,

safety needs, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization, respectively. When an

individual has fulfilled the lower four requirements, one can go into the stage of self-

actualization. This is the stage in which individuals begin to “[achieve] one’s full potential,

including creative activities” (McLeod www.simplypsychology.org). In Roses mentorship

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experience, mentors provide for their pupil a sense of belonging, esteem— “feeling of

accomplishment” (McLeod), and safety needs. Rose is directly advocating other students to take

the opportunities of receiving help from mentors so they can reach self-actualization. By doing

so, one can utilize their mentor’s guidance to refine their idea of success and better understand

the position and decisions one must make when taking on their journey to success.

Mike Rose believes a network of mentors can ultimately guide students, regardless of

their demographics, in achieving one’s dynamic idea of success by strengthening one’s higher

cognitive thinking and critical thinking skills. It is important to actively pursue gaining a

multiplicity of mentors because each mentor is unique. Rose acknowledges human imperfection

by explaining how each mentor has their strengths and specialties in certain fields. Rose

illustrates his argument by narrating his undergraduate experience and how he demonstrated

exemplary work ethics and motivation. However, in the twenty-first century, an absurd

abundance of students, in both lower and higher education, are lacking healthy work ethics and

are not as motivated as they should be. Most of this is due to modern social standards, such as,

high expectations, “taking the easy way out” and the shift of what higher education symbolizes,

alongside limited job openings. In the past, a high school diploma was considered scholarly but

now, obtaining a Ph.D. or Master’s degree is considered higher education. Without getting the

more prestigious degrees, it is more difficult to find a job that fulfilled one’s demands. These

limitations cannot be avoided but if one were to take the time to truly understand and accept

Rose’s argument, then they would be able to break away from the “norm” and achieve the

quality of success one desires.

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Work Cited

McLeod, Saul. “Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.” Simply Psychology, Simply Psychology, 2017,

www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html.

Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary, Penguin, 1989.