The Kilted Samurai: A Little Something About Myself

Hello my name is Wesley Dugle. I’m a So Cal guy, born in Long Beach raised in San Pedro. Lived there most of my life, not a bad town, but it was boring to me so I came up here to SJSU to get a change of scenery.

Now first off you might be asking “Dugle? But with those ‘Can’t drive for s**t eyes’ you should have a name like Wong or Chang or Kim, right?” Well first of all, none of those last names pertain to me because I’m Japanese and second of all I have that last name because I’m half white and my dad comes from that end of my genes. My middle name in fact is Hayato, which means falcon and samurai. To be exact I’m about 50% Japanese and about two thirds Scottish/Irish, which makes me kind of like a samurai in a kilt. I’m proud of my double heritage though and feel blessed to be born that way because I can identify with both sides and learn from both cultures.

A few little tid bits about myself; I’m a Journalism major (obviously since I’m taking this class) looking to minor in Japanese possibly. I’ve been avidly writing since my junior year of high school and have kept a movie review blog going on Myspace for the last half year or so called “Saitosan’s Movie Reviews.” I enjoy doing kendo (Japanese fencing), cross country biking, watching films particularly of the action/sci-fi/adventure/thriller genre, and I’m an avid sports fan of the Cincinnati Bengals and the Los Angeles Lakers (Sports is another medium I would like to write about). I’m also a part of the Theta Chi Fraternity Gamma Xi chapter on campus and I live in the house near by.

In general what I’m looking to get out of this class is to learn if I really want to pursue this career field. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing, but the thing is this field isn’t exactly steady work and most of the time does not pay well and I probably would be better off trying one of my other major ideas like geology, business, or Japanese. So basically this class is a test for me to see if this is really what I want to make a career out of and I’m hoping it’s the case because in the end I want to do something I love for the rest of my life rather than something that pays well but doesn’t give me any spiritual satisfaction. Anyways, I also hope to learn how to improve my writing because even though my writing is far and above better than most of my peers in this school (mostly because almost nobody knows how to write in this school) I would like to bring my skill more up to the speed of the best writers in the school. I’m definitely in need of some improvement in terms of proofreading and vocabulary/grammar but I think at least I’m pretty strong in delivering solid messages in what I write. Often most people say my strongest skill in my writing is that they feel like I’m speaking to them as they read rather than reading some robotic piece of “you know what” from other writers. So hopefully in this class I can polish that skill to perfection as well. The only other thing I would like to improve is to learn how to be more concise because as you can see I’m a little wordy with my write ups even for a short little “Introduce Yourself” assignment like this.

So that’s me in a nutshell; a kilted samurai who is skilled in swordsmanship, loves to write, cheers for a lousy football team but cheers for a great basketball one, a film buff who loves to write about the stuff he watches, a member of the longest standing SJSU fraternity on campus, and looking to see if doing what he loves is really a practical career field to pursue. Anyways I hope you learned a few cool things about myself in this brief paper and I’m looking forward to learning from you this semester!

Sayonara!
~Wesley Hayato Dugle