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.