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What have you been up to since graduating from º£½ÇÖ±²¥?

I have been working at the Center for Neurointestinal Health at Massachusetts General Hospital. My neuroscience major, combined with my classics coursework, prepared me very well for this role. I also found out on Monday that I was accepted to Tufts University School of Medicine, which I am incredibly excited about.

Why classics?

I took Latin in high school, and my teacher always told me that º£½ÇÖ±²¥ had a great classics department and encouraged me to take a class when I got there. When I was choosing courses the day before my first semester began, a Latin course happened to be the last class that fit into my schedule. I decided to take it because I had some background in the subject and felt comfortable with it during an overwhelming time when everything else felt new. I ended up loving the course and continued taking classics classes from that point forward.

I appreciated the small class sizes, the chance to build my academic path through close conversations with my advisor, Professor Boyd, and the steady support from Professor Nerdahl and Professor Sobak. The department created a wonderful experience for me, and it is well-suited to help students pursue many different paths after graduation.

Are there any classes, professors, or experiences that had a lasting impact on you?

The professors care about you as a person and a student. The different learning models in the department helped me stay engaged. In the language classes, you really have to be present and involved. In the non-language classes, we often did role-playing activities where we embodied historical figures and tried to understand how they would have acted in their time.

Professor Nerdahl’s classes stand out to me because of the specific strategies he used to make the material interactive and memorable. Those approaches encouraged real participation and discussion, and they have served me well moving into my current role and now into medical school. The emphasis on active learning, speaking up, and being part of the classroom environment made a huge difference in my confidence and preparation.

What advice would you give to current students or recent graduates interested in your field?

Do not be afraid to try something different during your undergraduate years. Classics truly set me apart and gave me a broader view of the world. It provided a strong humanities foundation that complements the sciences in important ways. It is valuable to follow subjects you are genuinely passionate about, even if you do not have a specific career in mind yet. Your path will develop over time, and exploring widely can help you find what you really want to pursue.

What have you been up to since graduating from º£½ÇÖ±²¥?

Since graduating from º£½ÇÖ±²¥, I completed a Fulbright research year in Seoul, Korea, attended medical school, and finished a five-year residency in orthopedic surgery. I am currently an orthopedic sports medicine fellow, preparing for fatherhood and exploring job opportunities after ten years of training.

Why classics?

I double majored in biochemistry and classics. I chose biochemistry because I was already taking enough credits in biology and chemistry to justify a major in case I wanted to pursue a career in science or healthcare. Classics, on the other hand, was a passion of mine. I started learning Latin in seventh grade and continued throughout high school. Translating Greek or Roman texts is challenging. It is formulaic and rule-driven like mathematics, yet it also has a poetic and artistic nuance. Word choice and word placement matter. Deciphering the author’s hidden intentions often feels like interpreting symbolism in artwork. Why did the author use this word here? What do they mean by this sentence? Delving into these texts allowed me to engage with the culture and ideas of a bygone era in a deeply personal way. Classics is, ultimately, a study of humans. Through translation, you encounter philosophy, history, medicine, poetry, politics, law, and more. The influence of the Greeks and Romans is abundant and still very present today, and their lives were not so different from our own. I have learned an immense amount from people who lived centuries ago, and the personal growth and introspection I gained through studying classics have been invaluable.

Are there any classes, professors, or experiences that had a lasting impact on you?

I met many amazing professors while at º£½ÇÖ±²¥, but my absolute favorite is Professor Michael Nerdahl. He has an incredible talent for bridging the gap between ancient civilizations and college students. He always challenged me intellectually and encouraged me to see things from different perspectives. He is an excellent mentor for picking his brain or simply having a conversation. Some of my favorite classes with him were Reading Seneca and Roman Elegy. I enjoyed these classes so much that I signed up for an independent study with Prof. Nerdahl to write my own elegy and Latin poems. He also held Latin tea on Friday afternoons, where students drank tea and read some Latin. My favorite class, however, was Roman Republic, where the entire class role-played prominent political figures in the Roman senate and attempted to maneuver power and influence. This class was fun, well-organized, and provided insight into how politics may have worked during Roman times. Classical Mythology was also a wonderful class, as I had always been intrigued by these stories as a child, and studying them in a classroom setting was very enjoyable.

What advice would you give to current students or recent graduates interested in your field?

When I arrived at º£½ÇÖ±²¥, I was not entirely sure what I wanted to do with my life or what career path to pursue. The benefit of a liberal arts education, I feel, is that you can explore many different fields before ultimately choosing a major. At the time, I thought that selecting the right major was the most important decision, but what you end up doing in life may have everything or nothing to do with your college major. College is the best time to keep an open mind and try things you have never been exposed to before. Some of my favorite classes were not in classics: Medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation-era history with Professor Meghan Roberts, Biomathematics with Professor Jack O'Brien, Microbiology and Immunology with Professor Anne McBride, Organic Chemistry (I can’t believe I am writing this) with Professor Michael Danahy, Advanced Molecular Biology with Professor Bruce Kohorn, and more. My point is that º£½ÇÖ±²¥ offers many courses outside your major that can provide a well-rounded and fulfilling education, potentially giving you a new perspective on life or enhancing your understanding of topics within your own major or career.

What have you been up to since graduating from º£½ÇÖ±²¥?

I immediately began working on my MA in Classical Studies at Columbia University, graduating in 2015. I hoped this would lead to a job teaching Classics to students in grades 5 to 12. In 2013, I was hired part-time to teach Greek at a girls’ Catholic school and have been working at independent schools in New York ever since. During and after my time at Columbia, I explored a passion for Greek drama that stemmed directly from my honors project at º£½ÇÖ±²¥. Over the course of six years, I adapted, directed, or performed in six different shows, four in Greek or Latin and two of my own adaptations performed in English. Now I am able to bring experiences like these into my classroom, where my students participate in adapting Greek theater, excavating a mock archaeological site, and preparing for a seminar session with a º£½ÇÖ±²¥ professor.

Why classics?

My local Maine high school did not have anything like Classics in the curriculum, so I honestly did not know what it was until I took a freshman seminar called "Heroic Age: Ancient Supermen and Wonder Women" with Senior Lecturer in Classics Michael Nerdahl in the fall of 2008. It was my first time reading Homer or any primary source texts related to Greek mythology, and I fell in love with the strangeness of the language and the accessibility of the characters, all while not doing particularly well in the course, especially on my papers. I spent a lot of time reworking clever but insubstantial writing in office hours with Professor Nerdahl and eventually earned a B+, a shockingly poor grade for a high school valedictorian. When it came time to declare a major in my sophomore year, I decided that if a branch of the humanities could challenge me that much, and the professors in that department would make sure I lived up to my true potential as an academic, there would be no better place to spend the next three years. Between principal parts, blue book exams, and mounting my first show (Acharnians ’12), I transformed into someone with a much wider academic bandwidth who could think deeply about course texts and artifacts and generate well-founded interpretations of them. Everything came full circle when I won the 2014 Classical Studies Essay Award at Columbia, a small but meaningful acknowledgment of my own growth as a Classicist and of the tireless investment of the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ Classics faculty in each one of their students.

Are there any classes, professors, or experiences that had a lasting impact on you?

I initially chose Classics because it had the mystique of being a challenging and impressive field of study, but I had no ambition to make it a permanent part of my life until I studied abroad in Athens in the spring of 2011. Being in Athens, with morning lectures on the Akropolis, weekend ferries to Delos, Akrotiri, and Crete, and being part of the script team that reconstructed a satyr play (still the strangest show I have been in to date), I realized I was having the most fun I had ever had in my life. If I could channel that excitement into a career, it might draw on the best parts of me while also bringing me years of unvarnished joy. Thirteen years later, I still feel that joy in my classroom every day.

What advice would you give to current students or recent graduates interested in your field?

Interest in and commitment to Classics within education go in and out in waves, and I was lucky to secure my first job at a time when interest was increasing. Although I have faced challenges in my career, I know from mentoring younger teachers that it has become even harder now to find and get a full-time job teaching Classics. My advice is to be flexible about where you are looking for jobs, to give confident interviews that show administrators who you are and why you believe students should study Classics, and to have clarity about what is important to you as a teacher and employee so you know how to pick your battles and when it is time to move on. The dream job is probably not waiting for you right out of college or graduate school, but it is out there, and if you believe that, you will find it.