Carlos Ricketts Jr.

Student

“SMC’s vast mixture of people makes you stretch your communication skills and ‘people skills’ in general.”

Carlos Ricketts Jr. is a born speaker, a skill that could play an important part in his future. “I wouldn’t cross it out,” he says with a laugh. But at the moment, he has very definite ideas about how he’ll best utilize his voice. “I plan to be a successful recording artist,” he says. “I’ve taken voice and piano and I want to record gospel because I’m really involved in my church. And along the way,” he continues, “I’d like to inspire a lot of young people to make plans and then follow their cause to success.” But Carlos is not at all starry-eyed about what it takes to be successful.

“Everybody says, ‘Oh, I’m going to be a movie star.’ But people don’t often enough think through all that they need to do to reach their goal, whatever it is.” He says he’s learned a lot about “the practicalities of life” in a class he’s taken from Professor Gayle Davis-Culp. “She’s helping me to realize that you need to know your opposition. If you don’t know your opposition, you don’t know what you stand for,” says Carolos. “So if you’ve got a strong stand on social issues, or if you’re critical of a certain musical sound, you have to be able to explain, ‘Why?’”

Carlos, who plans to get a BA in English, has a real mission he’d like to accomplish with his inspirational music. “I definitely would like to rid the world of pre-judgment,” he says. “And the best way to change the world is for me to change myself. Everyone in my circle has a circle of their own,” he explains. “And if I change my little circle, there’s a ripple effect—like raindrops on a pond. So if my songs carry a positive message, I like to think those message will, in some way, be felt all over.”

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