Jack Schouten is a man whose origins are unknown. His age is a mystery, and although he says he has been an English Professor here at Solano College since 1987, the rumor is that he has just somehow always been here. Known as Professor Schouten to his students, and Jack to his colleagues, he is loved and respected by all.
Jack’s unique perspective on life is reflected in his style of teaching and how he relates to his students. He considers working here at the college to be “A really rewarding experience” and is grateful to have the chance to help not only young people, but people of all ages, reach their academic and professional goals.
One of the things Professor Schouten likes most about teaching English is getting to know the students, not as students, but as people, hearing their stories, struggles, and dreams as human beings with a voice to be heard. It is important to him for people to have fun while they learn and he works hard to make that a reality in the classroom.
“It’s something that I love to do, so it’s not really a job to me.” He states with enthusiasm.
Professor Schouten attended Mira Loma high school in Sacramento. As a first-year student, he says he “Was always pretty much a loner.”
“I wasn’t popular. You could say I was picked on. I had a slight stutter, I stammered. I wasn’t particularly coordinated.” He recalls.
However, by the time he was a senior, he was involved in sports and had a solid circle of friends. One friend helped him gain his confidence by telling him “Hey, you got something to say, you need to start saying things in a clear way.”
This helped him get over his stammering and the two remained good friends and stayed in touch throughout the years.
Schouten attended American River College after graduating high school in 1975.
“I was there for a year, then I took a year off. I went back for a year and then I took more time off, so I was floating in between.”
From 1975 – 1978, he also got a job working at Yogi Bear Hamburgers. During this time, he met a bunch of people – many who became lifelong friends – that helped him gain confidence in himself and be comfortable in his own skin.
“At one point I hitch hiked across the United States to New York.”
He says that back then traveling was easy and that he “felt comfortable” when he got to New York, where he stayed for a month and a half in what he refers to as a “Real flop house”.
Schouten says that the room he stayed in had a bed, and a “sink that was tied to the wall with a rope,” with a bathroom and shower at the end of the hallway, and that was all he needed.
He enjoyed hanging out in Greenwich Village and listening to Bob Dylan. But he says that even though his twenties seemed to fly by, he never lost his focus. He ended up taking a bus back home where he got a job working at Bel Air Supermarket for the next eleven years to put himself through school at Sac. State., where he earned his BA and MA before eventually earning an MFA at Arizona State.
“It was fourteen years from graduating high school to getting a master’s at Sac. State. That’s all. That’s a long time but I lived life; had a good time.”
He says that looking back on those times he feels like “when you regret things, it’s not the things you did, it’s the things you didn’t do” that we end up regretting the most.
His philosophy is “Man dies twice, once when he physically dies, and the second time when he’s forgotten.”
Following this philosophy, he immortalizes the people he has met throughout his life whose experiences, personalities, and memories, he tries to keep alive when writing fiction or poetry.
Outside of the classroom Professor Schouten loves to travel, play golf, fly fish, and enjoys spending time working on his ten acres of land in Lincoln. But his favorite things to do are read, write, and spend “Time behind the desk puttering around”.
“Some of my friends watch T.V., some of them like to work on Sudoku, some do crosswords. I write. That’s my past time.”
He is currently working on what he calls “A grasp of poems tentatively titled, Making Do” after being inspired by a person whom he observed pushing a shopping cart full of everything that they owned down the street, and how that relates to all of us in our own economic circumstances.
He has also written several short stories that he intends to send out for submission on a regular basis, but says that his favorite genre to read, and to write, is poetry.
His advice to young writers is to “keep writing, day in and day out, never stop writing or reading. To get good you have to practice and part of practicing is to read and write until it becomes habit forming. Don’t do it for money, do it because you love it. Read the authors you like as well as the ones you don’t like, and craft your skills, find out what works and what doesn’t. Stay the course, find your voice, and just never stop. But, most importantly, have fun. When it stops being fun is when it’s time to quit.”
Professor Schouten was my English professor for my first two semesters here at SCC. He inspired and encouraged me to write my first fiction novel. And now, because of that support, my first novel titled The Promise, which is a crime mystery, has been accepted for publication and should be on the market sometime around Christmas this year.
I will always remember everything he taught us in class, not only about English, but about life as well. And his philosophy of just having fun will stick with me forever, because life is too short not to.
