Oracle Online

O: OK, I want to hear a bit about your personality. If a professor were to ask you what you were like and what your interests are, what would you say?

JH: I would say that I’m laid back and have fairly decent social skills. I am a pretty good abstract thinker. And that I’m a procrastinator.

O: You wouldn’t tell that to a professor though would you?

JH: I have. I absolutely have. I’m a little bit unorganized but I can usually make up for it with some decent creative thinking.

O: OK, now, if an attractive person of the opposite sex were to ask you what you were like, what would you say?

JH: Oooh, killer. Umm, I’d say that I was probably hard to get to know. I’m seemingly confident but the more you get to know me the more idiosyncrasies and small insecurities you would see. But I’m a pretty genuine person, pretty active.

O: What is a topic of conversation that always sparks your interest and obligates you to participate in the discussion?

JH: Moral truths, what we believe is right and wrong. Philosophical and societal questions about how people relate to each other. Everything in life is based on assumptions, so I’m always interested to see what people hold as their basic foundations, but not to rattle their cages. The more you go around the world every basic absolute truth we have here in society has a flip side. An example is society telling everyone it’s good to be thin. But the flip side is in history; it used to be good to be a bit heavier because it meant you were wealthy. There’s always a flip side and there doesn’t seem to be any universal truths. So anything with values, truths, or beliefs.

O: What do you do in your free time, or your time off?

JH: Umm, huh, this is gonna blow you away...I’m actually writing a book. It’s a fictional novel about a kid in his first year of college.

O: What sparked your interest to do that?

JH: I was trying to find a direction in life and trying to recognize my interests. There’s a time right after graduation that you’re going to reach, and, this is really wild, you move away and loose your entire social network. You usually don’t bounce into a career right away. And it’s real a shake-up time. I mean I had a really hard time with it. It was one of those areas in life where I just felt lost and really turned around. So I just started doing something that I dug. It didn’t (and still doesn’t) really make any practical sense; who knows if I’ll sell it. Who knows if it will even published. But it’s helping me reorganize my thoughts. Some people write in a journal to help clarify the way they look at the world.

O: What were you doing when you decided to start this endeavor?

JH: Oh, boy. Well, I was working at the scheduling office at Hamline. I was sitting there and it was a little slower over the summer so there weren’t that many events coming in or work for me to do. I was looking for something to do and that‘s when I started writing. I guess it was about five months or so ago.

O: How much of it have you written now?

JH: One-hundred and twenty pages.

O: And what is it about? Is it mostly a reflection upon your experiences or are you taking this a totally different direction?

JH: It’s semi-autobiographical in some ways because it’s based off of a lot of my experiences, but it’s experiences of friends too. I guess all the characters are conglomerates of myself and the people I know. So it’d be hard to classify it exactly. It’s kinda Seinfeldish because there’s a lot of observational humor about society and about the way people deal with each other, talk an act. It does kinda roll into a plot about a scandal and a mystery type thing too. It’s got the scandal to keep people engaged and keep the book moving and it’s got the observational stuff for people who like to philosophize a bit more.

O: So it’s based off of realistic happening and plots?

JH: Yes, it’s absolutely a real world. It is what I feel like the freshman-year in college experience is for a lot of people.

O: Are you writing it in first person then?

JH: Yeah, it’s a first-person narrative from the perspective of a boy who has a few characteristics that are
exactly like me. It’s much more growth oriented for me because it’s written from a perspective different than my own. I can throw in my own little tid bits, but I’m trying to look at the world from a point of view that is different. So I’m trying to figure out his views and mix in mine. It’s a cross section of a group.

O: So what are you shooting for with this book? Have you set a date to have it finished?

JH: I started off with a cultural piece about going to college and what it’s all about: finding a direction in life. But that sprung off into a plot line which I have outlined, and it has a definitive end. But I don’t have a specific date or pages I want to hit. I mean I’m not trying make a masterpiece and I don’t really care when I finish it.