Meet Sydney Pickern (CCS Literature '06)

Editor's note: We will be featuring "CCS stories" throughout the College's 50th Anniversary. Some stories will be personal stories and others will be written in the third person. Check the Anniversary page regularly to make sure you don't miss out and make sure to submit your story. This story was written and submitted by Sydney Pickern (CCS Literature '06). 

It's hard to describe exactly the debt I owe to the College of Creative Studies. Telling people in the years since that I was a Lit major, never really did it justice. I suppose I am preaching to the choir when I say there is something truly magical about CCS. Not just the small classes, the one on one attention, and the ability to be heard no matter how abstract the idea, but the teachers, Oh the teachers, and the books and poetry they had us read and write. Spacks, Bell, Ridland, Limon, and Castillo, they each opened doors into these mythological and wondrous places to the world of art and emotion, beauty and despair, and to ourselves. These experiences at CCS, with these teachers, are not something taken lightly. One carries the feeling of having discovered something rare with them for the rest of their lives. I am a social justice attorney now, and although the thread from here to there may be thinning as time marches on, I will, nonethless, be tied to CCS and my teachers for always. And I thank all of them, those with us here, and above (or below), for the selfless gifts they imparted. Thank you.