Hey,
My name is Seth. I am currently a sophomore majoring in English with an emphasis in creative writing. I hope to one day pursue a career as a writer but I am still not sure what that looks like right now. I love the English language, both poetry and prose. I am particularly interested in meeting interesting characters, especially those with point of views different from my own.
For my research topic, I am going to be studying General George S. Patton. Patton is known for being effective but also cut throat. In a class like this one, we are looking at what makes someone a good leader. Patton is a good person to look at particularly because he is so polarizing. He had massive disagreements with General Bradley about how the campaign in Sicily should be pursued. I would like to look at how a leader can get results from those other under his command. Is Patton still a good leader even though his men for the most part despised him? I would also like to look at how Patton is, in many ways, a kind of actor. I want to gauge how much of his behavior is constructed and how much of it is unfiltered. I will do this by looking at his external rhetoric through the speeches he gave to his men and contrasting that with the personal rhetoric he used with his wife.
Seth Villegas, Stanford University
Originally from Buena Park, CA