By Kara Thompson

University of Maryland’s Student Entertainment Events hosted its annual back-to-school lecture on Tuesday, Oct. 4 starring Jennette McCurdy, an actress, director, podcaster and New York Times bestselling author. 

McCurdy, who is most famous for playing Sam Puckett on Nickelodeon’s “iCarly,” recently wrote  the book “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” which was released in August. The book takes a deep look at McCurdy’s childhood and the nuanced relationship she had with her abusive mother, and her life as a young actress.

Senior mechanical engineering major and SEE’s lectures director, Katie Whitehead, led the process of finding a speaker, generating questions and then interviewing McCurdy at the Q&A-style lecture.

“The talent has to approve every question that we go through,” said Whitehead. “[I] looked at all the interviews she’s done recently, looked at questions that she has liked to be asked, that she said she really doesn’t like to be asked about … and then we go from there.”

The lecture included audience questions as well, which Whitehead said were collected from both social media and people waiting in lines near the venue. McCurdy was shown the final list and approved all of the audience questions, so Whitehead had about 20 to choose from.

“She was very good about being willing to answer questions that people asked, which was really nice,” Whitehead said. 

Despite her stress and nerves, Whitehead was eager for the opportunity to interview and interact with McCurdy.

“It’s one of the coolest parts of being lectures director,” she said. “Her book was amazing. I was so excited for her. I was a fan outside of [the lecture].”

Natalie Davis, a junior journalism major, has been a fan of McCurdy ever since she was a kid, watching iCarly. Davis read her book and loved it, and was impacted by the messages shared by McCurdy within it.

Davis decided to write a letter to McCurdy expressing how important she and the book were to her and the issues she has faced in her own life. She gave the letter to SEE _UMD, who was able to pass it along to McCurdy

“I have a personal connection to her because of the stories that she shared in her book,” Davis said. “I wanted to tell her she made me feel less alone, and she made me feel like I could be open about [my own struggles].”

Because it was such an exciting prospect, Davis posted about the letter on her Instagram story, and tagged both SEE and McCurdy. McCurdy reposted Davis’ story with the caption “thankful for your lovely letter — grateful for you.” . 

“It’s validating to me, because one of the first things that I said in the letter is ‘Thank you, I’m grateful for you’ and then her response to me was ‘Thank you for your letter. I’m grateful for you,’” said Davis. “It’s mind blowing, I never would have expected that.”

A piece of McCurdy’s advice that Davis found really powerful was her theory that if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no. 

“If somebody wants you to do something, if you’re not all in, if you’re not like ‘hell yes, I’ll do that,’ then you shouldn’t do it or you should really, really strongly think about it before you make the decision,” said Davis. “In [McCurdy’s] life, a lot of things were forced on her by producers and by people who had power over her, and she didn’t want to do it, but she wanted to do it to appease them, to make them happy. But it didn’t ultimately end up making herself happy.”

Junior mechanical engineering major Isabel Gallagher agreed that this quote was her biggest takeaway from the lecture.

“To me, that kind of put things in perspective because it shows that we should really be only doing things that we’re excited about, not things that sometimes we think we’re supposed to do,” she said.  

Gallagher said McCurdy is able to touch a lot of college kids’ lives because they grew up watching her, and she is now speaking out about heavy topics like mental health and parental abuse.

“I really appreciated how much she talked about therapy because sometimes talking about therapy is kind of a taboo subject,” Gallagher said. “She just normalized it which is really nice, and made it seem like even if you might have a small problem … you should take that opportunity to get the help that you need.”

Featured Image: A yard sign in front of Somerset Hall advertises Jennette McCurdy’s Back to School Lecture. Photo taken on Oct. 4, 2022 in College Park, Maryland. Photo by Ceoli Jacoby.