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Jeremy Wells is an assistant professor of English, father and snake wrestler.
The 35-year-old said he was forced to overcome his fear of snakes after moving to the Carbondale area. He said his family had coexisted peacefully with the 5-foot black snake living near his home until he received a call from his wife about two years ago.
The reptile was in the house.
Wells said he rushed home, grabbed the snake behind the head like the Crocodile Hunter, threw it in a bucket and set it free in Giant City State Park.
The one-time snake wrestler came to the university about three years ago after earning his doctorate in English at the University of Michigan in 2000. Originally from Huntsville, Ala., he said Carbondale made sense to him geographically because his post-Civil War English specialty fit nicely with the history of the town.
"It's as far south as you can get and still be in the North, or what was the Union, in the time of the Civil War," Wells said.
The first-generation college student said he decided to become a teacher during his junior year at Vanderbilt University. He said it was hard for him to believe he could make money doing something he loved.
"To make a living reading books, writing about books, talking about books to colleagues, talking about books to students," Wells said. "I still carry this almost na've fascination that you can do this for a living."
Wells said he began reading in third grade after he moved to Texas with his family and was forced to give away his dog because of a pet ban. He said reading Wilson Rawls' "Where the Red Fern Grows" - the story of a boy and his hunting dogs - led him to all different books about dogs and eventually into other genres.
"I can watch dog shows with my son now and I can identify the Affenpinscher before the crowd does," he said.
During the last two and a half years, Wells has learned a new balancing act because his wife, Amy, gave birth to their son, Zachary. It has been hard learning how to balance his research, which he described as a long-term investment for satisfaction, with the immediate enjoyment of playing with his son and being with his family, he said.
"When I go home, my son would take up as much of my time as I wanted to give him, and happily," he said.
Wells said he has replaced activities such as golf and hiking with the hobby of designing courses he would probably never teach.
He said he enjoys helping students examine literature from different angles than they would otherwise, and often compares literature to his life to spark the interest of his students.
Buck Weiss, a doctoral student from Bridgeport studying English, said he has taken multiple classes from Wells. Weiss said Wells is unique because he pushes himself to attain a further understanding of literature.
"The greatest thing about Wells himself is that he's so knowledgeable and yet he really is just interested in knowledge itself," he said.
Weiss said Wells has an ability to keep conversation flowing in class and relating comments from students back to the subject matter, no matter how seemingly off-topic.
Wells said he wants to promote a long-lasting and continual interest in literature.
"If I've done a good job, then it never feels fully familiar," he said. "If we can do that then we can keep reading forever and never get to the end of it or never find something that you want to stop."
ryan_rendleman@dailyegyptian.com 536-3311 ext. 268
