A&M-Commerce junior Andy Pickles trades English rain for southern hospitality

Junior math major and education minor Andy Pickles may not look out of place in East Texas, which he has called his home for the past two years. However, once he speaks, it quickly becomes clear Texas has not always been his home.

"I'm from Maidstone," Pickles said. "It's in the southeast corner of England, in the county town of Kent."

Pickles said he initially came to the U.S. in 2004 on a visit, and made multiple returns after that. He then stayed with some friends in the southern U.S., and they knew residents of the Northeast Texas area.

"Through them, I met some other people, and ended up in Sulphur Springs and that's where I was staying for two years," he said. "That's where I went to the first two years of college at PJC (Paris Junior College). I got my Associate's (degree) there, and then transferred to here. This is my first semester of the second two years, and hopefully there'll be another two years after that, so somewhere down the line, I'll need to get my Master's."

Pickles said there is a significant difference between a smaller college like PJC and A&M-Commerce for an international student.

"You feel like much more of a small fish in a big pond in this college," he said. "There's marginally less of a fascination, if you want to put it that way. Obviously, there's less of a sense of foreign people being really strange. I think there are a lot more foreign people around."

Although he may always have a sense of his national origin, Pickles said he easily became comfortable with his surroundings at American college.

"It's really hard to feel completely regular, other than being around people that know me," he said. "I felt very known in PJC, because it was a small campus. Things were not split building to building, everyone sees everybody all of the time. Now here, it's very much easier to go unnoticed, if you choose to or simply don't step out."

Pickles certainly did not go unnoticed at junior college, where he made a friend in Joy Hogue, who had many good things to say about him.

"We met at PJC here in Sulphur Springs," she said. "I needed help in Algebra and he helped me a lot. He's a very good man, very trustworthy, dependable, and one of the smartest people I've ever known."

Hogue said she realized a significant difference between Pickles's culture and hers after completing a joint writing assignment they an award for at PJC.

"We wrote a paper together last year," she said. "He let me realize through his writing how different English and American is. He's so proper."

In Commerce or Northeast Texas in general, it may be easier to "step out" than elsewhere, according to Pickles. He said one of the main reasons he kept revisiting the South and decided to go to school here is its hospitality.

"It's known for its warm behavior toward people, and it seems to really stand out in the conversations with strangers," Pickles said. "I didn't talk to strangers before I came here, and you wouldn't want to talk to strangers most of the time if you were in England. If you start to, they'd start reacting toward you like, ‘Why are you interfering with me and my life? Leave me alone.'"

Pickles said he was made keenly aware of this difference when he first arrived at A&M-Commerce.

"It amused me that at the international orientation, there was a comment made toward the end to be aware that here, people that you've never met before, people that just walk by, will nod and say ‘Hi' and stuff like that," he said. "I'd been here some time and was aware of that, but I thought if I hadn't been here, didn't know that, and all these strangers kept saying ‘Hi,' I'd wonder what was going on. There's just that friendliness, and that's something I really like about here that is distinctively different."

He said the questions from these strangers usually follow a similar pattern.

"Usually the first question is ‘Where are you from?' and the next one is ‘Australia?'" he said. "That's a very common guess, and I think that's just because of an interference of accents. Beyond that, it would be, ‘Why in the hell did you end up in little old Sulphur Springs?'"

Pickles said his friends usually do not understand the type of climate he comes from.

"I love the weather here, that's another reason I wanted to come back, as well," he said. "In fact, I got into the car with the person that brought me here this morning and they actually had the air in the car set to just slightly warm, and I said, ‘This is getting nice now, when it's getting cool in the mornings and I don't have to face an air conditioner.' And they said ‘Yeah, do you ever stop wearing shorts?' And I said ‘Sure, when it cools down, but I know in two hours it's going to be warm.' I had to point out to them that anything mid-70s and up is very good English weather. I love the sunshine. I love the temperature."

While he would like to stay and pursue a career here in the U.S., Pickles said he understands the limitations and is not getting too ambitious with his thinking.

"I couldn't say plan, because it's all down to following the right channels," he said. "I'm here on a student visa, which means I would go back. But, what I'd really like to do is to find a position, a job connected to my degree, and I would love to stay here. Stay here and use that degree to teach here, and I gather there is a shortage. If there's still a demand at that time, then, yeah, I like to think I'd be able to stay."