On September 26, 2013 I attended the Freshman Convocation with guest speaker and author, Mary Roach. When I first got to the event it was a mass of confusion with everyone trying to sign the sign-in sheet to make sure they got credit for being there. Eventually, I got into the Performing Art Center and settled, but I still was not exactly sure what to expect from Mary Roach. However, as soon as she started to speak I immediately started to enjoy myself. She was funny, personable, and there was no ridiculous question she would not answer. Roach spoke at length about her books and she especially spoke about the Freshman Common Reading book, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife.
One thing Mary Roach said about Spook was how she never liked how she ended the book by saying “What the hell, I believe in ghosts.” She said she felt like it was a little misleading because she wanted to go on this journey to really find out if we have souls and what happens after we pass away and to end it like that was not what she was going for and most people probably did not take it in the way she had hoped, which was in a funny, humorous way. I am very sure that almost everyone in the room agreed with her that they didn’t like the ending of the book either.
Another big part of her speech was her talking about how she got into writing about things like the afterlife, and the human digestive system sex. Roach said it all stemmed from her natural curiosity. She always wanted to know everything she could know about almost everything in the world and that is what she set out to do in her writing. She would pick a topic, research it until she couldn’t research it anymore and finally she would write a book about what she discovered. That was one thing I really like about Mary Roach, is her always encouraging us to be curious and ask questions which isn’t something I see being encouraged a lot in the real world. Overall, I really enjoyed the Freshman Convocation and just maybe now have a different opinion on Mary Roach and her books.