Steal Your Sentence

As a short exercise for my writing class, we took a sentence from a famous piece of literature. Mine below is from The Great Gatsby.

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. Let me take you back to my days in grammar school.” A hectic time flashed before his eyes - lots of learning and trying to fit in and observing life all around him in a totally new way.

“ ‘Son, whenever you’re speaking in front of a lot of people,’ my father told me, ‘just remember to think about what you want to say, and then say it. There are other kids that will be more nervous than you.”

“That always takes me to this one day after class I’ll never forget.”

“But, but Mrs. Willows I prwomise I’ll do better next time. You just need to give me one more chance”

“Now Nicholas, I’m sorry but I can’t do that. If I gave you another chance to present your story, I would have to do the same for all the other boys and girls.”

Nick sat up from his recline and gazed out the window. The sun reflected off a moist glaze filling his eyes. “I remember starting to cry, and as I brought up my hand to hide the tears Mrs. Willows took hold of it, looked me in the eye, and said I would be allowed another chance, then wiped the tears off my face.”

At this point Dr. Burgess raised his chin at Nick with discovery. “And you think this may have been the start of your depression?”

“No, no good sir. not at all. I started feeling this way back in the late of ’22.” Nick explained with self-realization: “Like I said, the one relationship I had, which I ruined by the way, was with a girl so superficial I myself didn’t notice it until she was gone. And aside from that my only real friend was murdered.”

“But you’ve always had a privileged life, excuse me, a sheltered life - safe from common disadvantages. You yourself - ”

“Ha!” Nick blindly cut him off. “A real friend I said. He wouldn’t even tell me half his story!”

Catchy Title

So I know you few who are true to my blog must be asking yourself, “Jake! What classes are you taking?!” Well, fret no more as the list is here by popular demand. Yes that’s right - I take requests. Forget this intro - here’s the body.

Philosophy of Human Nature

Gonzaga being a Jesuit school, there’s a reoccurring theme of philosophy that nags at us every year. I got my 100 & 400 level classes out of the way last year. Now I’ll do my 300-level in the springtime which leaves - yes you guessed it - my 200-level at the moment. So what is the philosophy of human nature? Well that’s why I’m taking the class aren’t i? Haha, see what I did there. So far we’ve read Socrates’ Pheado and we’re going to be reading something called Discourse on Methods and Meditations on First Philosophy by Descartes. And don’t assume for one moment that I will not purposefully pronounce the author any other way than that which it is spelled. “Dess-car-tess.”

Creative Fiction Writing

I’m in the Writing Track of the English major and so I am rather excited to be taking this class as it is the first of my concentrated classes for my major. We do fun exercises, some of which I’ll be posting throughout the semester.

Romantic Literature

This is not about romantic literature like Pride and Prejudice or Twilight. It’s about the English (& German) writers and poets of the late 18th to the early 19th centuries; the precursor of the American Transcendentalist movement (thank you Sean Conlin). Sadly we’re not reading Wordsworth but I don’t mind as much because I’ve been reading his poetry on my own accord. Books for this class are: Faust, Part 1 by Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, The Robbers by Schiller, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful by Burke, Poetry and Prose by Percey Shelley, and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. The class is different than other English classes because we discuss the works very philosophically - it’s cool.

Introduction to Theatre Arts

This is my first actual theatre class, and my first theatre-participation-type-involvement thing. Sure, I did stage crew in high school for a bit but this is different. I actually acted and improvised in the class - something which I have never done before. I rather enjoyed it, but we just played shorter roles and I could see myself really getting into method acting if the character has more significance and endurance than just a short classroom exercise. Other than that it’s a theatre survey class so we’re reading Oedipus Rex for the fourth time in my history of English classes.

Studies in Drama

This teacher is okay. I think she’s a bit too cheery for my taste. But alas I have been tainted for on the first day of class she declared the fall of the Roman Empire to be directly caused by Christianity. Now, I wrote a rather large term paper last year about the fall of said empire and I guarantee myself that Christianity did not appear anywhere on my term paper, notes, or research documents. But the class should be fun nonetheless. I’ve been assigned to read Oedipus Rex for the fifth time in my history of English classes.

Basic Drawing

It’s drawing - what can go wrong with this class? Besides, it will allow me to take painting in Florence in the springtime. Oooo - I like!

This is the conclusion.

101 Word Fiction

These are some flash fiction stories I wrote for a contest where they had to be exactly 101 words.

College Education

Each and every fall and spring green hearts hang on what it might bring. All the students flock to the schools in hope that their minds might become tools. Their beds are made, bags unpacked, alarms are set, books are stacked. Pens uncapped, they hang on every word. Eyes to the front and ready to absorb. Study, study, study until four in the morning, stop to pause and feel that yearning. Four years later and there they are, eager for the future, it’s not too far. But what do they see that astounds their eyes, a million waiting and no replies.

Hypotheticals

“All I’m saying is imagine how much more space we’d have in this world if there weren’t so many roads,” I said.

“But what about the cars? How would people get around?”

“I don’t know I’m just making an observation, I’m hypothesizing is what I’m doing. Maybe we can make better use of the railroad or something. Maybe people will get more exercise.”

“Yeah, and maybe we can all have horses and hitching posts. Just think of it; a hitching post with a meter. A hitching meter,” Julie shot out with a sarcastic tone.

“Really, hitching meter?”

Snoops & Gossip

“Oh Charlotte I wish you could have seen it! We danced and we held each other and oh it was just so romant - Charlotte, do - do you see that?”

“Why, Elizabeth I do see that! Is he…?”

“Yes, he is. He’s spying on us! That little snoop! Putting his nose into other people’s lives.”

“I absolutely hate it when they do that. When they just peer into our lives for all of just a few pages and judge us!”

“Don’t those readers have any respect for privacy?”

“Come on Elizabeth, let’s go into another room where we can’t be disturbed.”

“Creepers.”

Who I Am, for English Class

This is my first writing assignment for my English 101 class. We were told to talk about certain aspects of our life and what makes us who we are in general and in each day.

My mother has always been interested in history and so naturally she has lead my brother and I through the United States to all sorts of history wherever we could find it. I tended to excel in the history classes I took but I always found the Italian Renaissance to be the most magnificent, at least for me. They sought improvement in life, mastered the art of perfection, and then improved that. So when I am asked what I want to do with my life I’m reminded that I have too little time in this life.

Being the optimistic person I am I find comfort in that conclusion in that it’s better to have plenty of options, then none at all. Yet my eyes are too hungry and I set my sights on many fields: Architecture, environmental law, public service, art, writing, screenwriting, and then my hobbies: backpacking, rock climbing, physical fitness, reading, playing the guitar or any instrument, and understanding politics. And from this ideal of the Renaissance man, I take it further and obsess over mastering each of them just like Leonardo da Vinci who could pick up an entirely new skill and become a master of it. There’s so much that appeals to me because when I like something I see, I’m never satisfied with just that, but I become obsessed with replicating my own innovative version of whatever it was I just came across.

As of now, I am majoring in English writing. I like this major because it’s good for life, will help me if I chose to go to school, or help me if I chose an MFA program for screenwriting or something related to that. I was minoring in political science to help me with law school, but as of yesterday I switched to a minor of art. Last Sunday I saw a magnificent home in Pasadena, California built in 1908 by Charles and Henry Greene called The Gamble House. It exemplified the attention and perfection of every detail where form truly follows function. And so my architectural interests were revived once again as they have been so many times since I first though about what I would be when I grew up. While Gonzaga does not have an architecture program, studying art will give me adequate satisfaction until the chance that I go to an architecture school for my masters.

Yet, I’m still growing up and so my mother reminds me that I have so many opportunities to be fortunate for and that I’m at a pivotal time in my life. She says I need to keep and eye on the future, but to focus on living in the moment and in what will soon become ‘the good old days.’ I understand what she is saying, and so I try to remember that advice and to control my obsession over life’s opportunities and to learn to accept what it gives me at the moment. What I can remember, is that I know whatever I do, I will be good at it and I will be happy with it. I’m confident in my ability to form new and creative architectural ideas, my ability to get the most out of being a lawyer for the protection of the environment, and my ability to be creative and highly communicative in my writing.

In the book I am reading right now, Bill Clinton’s autobiography “My Life,” he says that life is not only shaped by the opportunities you accept, but also by the ones you don’t accept. As Bill Clinton took guidance from Abraham Lincoln’s saying “I shall study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come” I will remember this too.