JumpStart Reads

Welcome to JumpStart Reads!

We look forward to discussing the following texts with you in September.

This year, we’ve chosen recently published works in various genres to address current events in our country and world. These texts also invite us to consider the topics of work, career and calling, and service—topics you’ll address during JumpStart and over the next several years as a college student.

In the New York Times article “Kati Kariko Helped Shield the World from the Coronavirus,” reporter and journalist Gina Kolata considers one of the scientists and researchers who laid the groundwork for the Covid vaccine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/08/health/coronavirus-mrna-kariko.html

The following poems are taken from Poetry Foundation, a prominent website that is often used by writers, students, and scholars. In her poem “It Was Already Dangerous,” Lauren Whitehead—a poet and professor of drama at New York University—invites us to consider essential workers and the difficulties they face, especially during the pandemic.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/155911/it-was-already-dangerous

The writer Ari Tison celebrates her chosen calling in the poem “The Storyteller Gets Her Name.”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/155493/the-storyteller-gets-her-name

In the nonfiction essay “The Other Side of the Dike,” Brett Rowe recalls a summer job to consider work as well as other philosophical and theological subjects. Brett graduated from WWU in 2019 with B.A. degrees in English and music and in 2021 with a master’s degree in initial teaching (M.I.T.). The essay will be published this fall in the Gadfly, WWU’s journal of art and literature.

“The Other Side of the Dike,” by Brett Rowe

For further information, or if you have questions about this session, please contact: