The Lincoln Hall Project « College of Liberal Arts & Sciences « University of Illinois

Clinton Pettus (PhD ’81, psychology) talks with Kathryn Pettus (EdM ’78, education) about a confidence-building moment

Kathryn Pettus: I wanted to travel back a little ways back to the roots.

Clinton Pettus: Go back. Go on back, as they say (laughs).

Kathryn: Just a reminder that your mother had a real thirst and a taste for learning. And even though she probably felt she never went on a great adventure, a lot of adventures she took were through reading. She’d pick up a book and read it. Just love it and read, and put it back, and pick up another. And I think in her mind she wanted every child to have that great adventure. And fortunately she was able to do that.

Clinton: But the thing was—and this happens to people in life—when I came here, I found myself in classes with students who had gone to the biggest, the best, the most prestigious schools in the country. And I’m not going to name any of them, except to say including Illinois. And to get in class, I worked a little harder I think than most of them did, because they were gaps in what I had experienced as a student at a smaller school—a historically black institution. I worked a little harder but somehow believing that I could make the difference, that I could catch up. My dissertation research was on attributions of causality. And I came to realize that my mother and others had instilled in me the sense that I could make a difference in my own life. I was not at the mercy of the environment or society or whatever the case may be. And so going in the class you simply worked harder. But I remember clearly one case where I would say if you looked at the top 10 schools in this country, maybe therefore in the world, that every student in there was in one of them except for yours truly. And the first assignment that we had, um, we turned in the papers, and the faculty member came in the next class and said: “Who is Clinton Pettus?”

And I sheepishly put my hand up, thinking: “Okay, he’s gonna put me out. I was so bad. It’s gonna come.”

And he said, “Brilliant work!”

And everybody in class turned and looked at you—where did he come from, kind of thing. And that was one of those other confidence builders. But I did in life pick up the notion that you make a decision and you make it work. You don’t sit and worry about…And if little things don’t go right, instead of looking back—“Oh I wish I had…”—you say: “Oops I made some mistake. What adjustment do I have to make so I can get this done.” So I think that has meant a lot. And that has to do with confidence and having watched other people and realized that no matter how many books they published, how many articles they published, they were still human beings. And that I didn’t have to do it quite that way. I’m not opposed to any of those things, but I didn’t have to do it quite that way and still could be, I think, successful.