The Daily Campus

Issue date: 10/18/07 Section: Focus

Media Credit: Kevin McQuade Sam Pickering, a UConn professor, entertains his audience at the Co-op.

"I write non-fiction, and it's full of lies and distortions." Said Professor Sam Pickering, a noted essayist and UConn professor. This was the response he gave after an audience member asked him where the line of truth and fiction lay. He said there is no line. The professor's distinguished Southern accent, rang out through the Co-op Thursday night as he spoke about his works. He spoke on many subjects, reading excerpts from his book Autumn Spring, talking of things he had experienced, and even answered a few questions for aspiring writers.

"It was pretty inspiring as a writer," said Karina Manlove, a 5th-semester English and journalism double major.

The only knowledge many had of him before this was that he was inspired the dead poets society. Many of the audience members, some former students came to learn more about their professor.

Pickering also shared some funny interactions he has had with students through his years of teaching. One student got continuous zeros on his quizzes even though he insisted he did all the reading. Five weeks later the student figured out that he had picked up the wrong class list and had bought all the wrong books. When asked if he noticed that they never talked about the books he read in class the student said, "I'm a business major - I thought they might do it differently over here."

Pickering jokingly commented that undergrads are "to young to really know us, but nice."

The professor underscored through his whole speech that with age came knowledge and a unique outlook on life. He spoke about bringing humor into aging and how, past a certain age, everybody talks about health. One day, when he met two other men, they realized that "all three of us had hernias and we had a wonderful time talking about it."

In another story, he talked about how the nurse who was about to give him a colonoscopy had recognized that he worked at UConn. She told him that her daughter had taken his class and said she would tell her daughter that she saw her. "And she did," Pickering said.

He went on to talk about the little annoyances that everybody experiences in life like the health insurance company that continued to send his mother letters almost a decade after she died.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools