Careers

"Studying Latin and Greek gave me excellent language and grammar skills that helped me through graduate school and every day at work, where I crank out multiple news stories a week.  The literary analysis and strong understanding of grammar and sentence construction required to study Greek and Latin help my writing every single day.  Studying classical history gave me a different worldview and valuable historic and cultural context as I cover the complex and ever evolving agricultural industry and rural America."

Studying the Classics helped train me to think in a more detail-oriented and precise manner. While in school, I was taught to notice how subtle differences in word choice and placement can completely change the meaning of a text. That ultimately translated to creating a more focused way of thinking which I have carried over into the field of Medicine. While I am not translating Homer or Virgil during rounds in the hospital, I certainly still use some of the skills I learned while studying the Classics on a daily basis. The attention to detail and focus needed to properly translate Latin or Greek is something I obtained during my time at Notre Dame and I can honestly say that it is a skill I use each and every day in my career.

"I went directly from my ND Classics degree to a Classics PhD program but have since switched trajectories to study religion in the late antique Middle East.  Every part of my undergraduate experience prepared me for my academic career today: studying abroad (twice!) in Italy, the summer archaeological dig in Albania, and especially the senior thesis I wrote.   All of the language preparation from ND Classics helped me expand into learning other languages (Arabic, Syriac, Armenian, Persian, etc.).  My curiosity and love of learning and teaching really started at ND, with the excellent example of the faculty of the Department of Classics."

The writing, research, and analytical training I received through ND Classics was essential in preparing me for law school and the practice of law. It taught me to be organized and concise.  Paper-intensive classes, culminating in a thesis in the Honors Seminar, taught me how to organize my research and sustain such research over a long period of time—critical in the practice of law.  The culture and history classes were fundamental to me ultimately pursuing law, as they introduced me to the legal foundations of Western society in Ancient Greece and Rome.  More than anything, law is about how words have meaning and power, and I first came to appreciate and hone that through my study of Classics.