My liberal arts education has equipped me with a broad base of knowledge in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and arts, and in the honors program I pursued independent projects exploring academic and personal connections, including a paper on ancient Mayan astronomy, a self-observation study on the effects of nutrition and hydration on exercise performance, and a paper on the influence of political context on the changing artistic representations of John Adams. The most rewarding moments for me are discovering and investigating connections – both broad ones, between fields and disciplines, and more specific ones, like the relationship between a piece of literature and an object of material culture. My personal philosophy of life is that everything is connected, and this conviction drives my desire to study Classics. My experience studying abroad in Florence and traveling through Italy and Greece intensified my zeal for the field and, in particular, fueled my ambition to specialize in classical archaeology. I have also learned Greek, of course, starting with an intensive two-semester course at the university’s summer school. I have since taken courses on mythology, art and archaeology, and religion, on ancient history, and on the classical tradition.

As I learned more and more about classical civilization through the language, I realized that I was passionately interested in many aspects of the field of Classics. In my first semester at university, I started learning Latin and thoroughly loved it. Always eager for a challenge, I was intrigued by the American founders’ accounts of the torture of learning such a difficult language. My desire to learn Latin stemmed from reading American Revolutionary-era history during junior high and high school, and particularly from the countless Latin quotations I found in John Adams’ writings. The torment of the Founding Fathers is responsible for my interest in Classics.

Example of my checklist traits