Date and Time

Many individuals in this world struggle with finding a sense of comfort or community in their lives.  Being a Jesuit school, Loyola works to create a community where all people can feel at home and loved.  Before enrolling at Loyola, I attended a Catholic Basilian High School that put a large emphasis on brotherhood and acceptance.  These values are some of the most important things to have when growing into a young adult.  I believe that going through that kind of environment in high school truly prepared for all aspects of life coming forward.  In the short time I've been at this college I have notice that drastic differences from and other state college that most of my classmates went on to attend.  The Messina program at Loyola is a fantastic example of the emphasis put on family and acceptance.  From the first day of school you are placed with multiple other students with your same interests in order to create a sense of belonging and to help students make their first friends in college.  Phil Kaye in Date and Time, created poems to explain the situations he endured growing up.  He was Japanese and Jewish which, at the time, was extremely hard to understand for most people.  He faced large amounts of discrimination in school and struggled to find that sense of brotherhood and comfortability that Loyola and other Jesuit schools make sure to offer.

The first part of Date and Time focused on presenting the struggles that Phil went through in the early stages of life.  One of his poems explains to the readers how because he grew up in a primarily Japanese environment, Phil had trouble understanding English in school.  Not being able to converse fluently with other classmates created a feeling of loss and separation in him.  Issues like these are precisely what Jesuit institutions try to prevent through service work and a sense of community.  I have only lived in Baltimore for a short time so I have not had a chance to become involved with much service work, however, back in high school, I was involved in much mission and service work which helped me get to know others who were outsiders to me.  For example, my homeroom collected canned food for about a month and drove around the city of Detroit delivering food to those who needed it.  Taking on uncomfortable and new situations such as this helped me to become closer with people in school that I normally would not have spoken with.  Group events like these would have been a drastic help to Phil Kaye during his childhood to help him make friends and understand the problems of the world at a deeper level.

In the second part of Date and Time, the poem Ruby's stood out to me.  In this poem, Phil talks about an old restaurant that was his absolute favorite place to go to eat.  He mentions how a hostess remembers him by name which really caught my attention.  Phil's restaurant, Ruby's, symbolized that place of comfort that he never found in school.  A place where the people there remember your name and know you better than most.  This restaurant is what Phil wishes his school life was like.  He wishes that he had a community or group of friends that new his name and his life, and most importantly, made him feel at home.  These are the specific values that Loyola tries so hard to provide as a Jesuit institution.  If Phil Kaye had access to places such as Loyola as a kid, chances are he would not have had to deal with the struggles he speaks about through his poems.