Alumni and Careers

What have you been up to since graduating from Bowdoin?

Since graduating from Bowdoin, 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 Bowdoin, but my absolute favorite is Prof. 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 Bowdoin, 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  Prof. Meghan Roberts, Biomathematics with Prof. Jack O'Brien, Microbiology and Immunology with Prof. Anne McBride, Organic Chemistry (I can’t believe I am writing this) with Prof. Michael Danahy, Advanced Molecular Biology with Prof. Bruce Kohorn, and more. My point is that Bowdoin 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 Bowdoin?

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 Bowdoin. 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 Bowdoin 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 Bowdoin 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.

What is your current job (position) and what do you do specifically?

I just completed my first year of the Match Teacher Residency in Boston at Match High School, a charter school near BU. In addition to working with freshmen as a humanities tutor this past year, I completed the first year of coursework for my Masters in Effective Teaching. In the fall, I am staying on at Match as the AP Language and Composition teacher for juniors and seniors. Though I am teaching English (my other major at Bowdoin), the work I did as a Classics major has already proven enormously helpful as I begin my teaching career. The course I will be teaching in the fall hinges on writers' craft and rhetorical argument, two aspects of writing I spent a significant amount of time thinking about in my Classics courses while at Bowdoin. I also get to tie in mythology more than I was expecting, which students find thoroughly entertaining. Above all, the love of literature and etymology I got to explore deeply as a Classics major is a large part of what makes my job so enjoyable and engaging. Plus, it’s always fun to write Greek on the board and have students try to guess what it says.

What is your current job (position) and what do you do specifically?

I am currently working at an advertising agency in Chicago, AbelsonTaylor, as an account planner (strategist). As an account planner/strategist, I work with client teams to discover consumer insights and determine the voice of the consumer. Our agency specializes in health wellness so I do a lot of market research with patients and map out patient journeys to discover their healthcare needs. I am also attending graduate school in the fall at University of Chicago for a Master's of Social Sciences with a focus in psychology. I'll be taking a mix of classes in psychology, social sciences, research methodology, behavioral science, and strategy (the lab I'm planning to work in is actually at Booth Business School).

I do not directly use Latin in any way, but I think a balanced liberal arts curriculum has made it easier to pick up new skills in my industry and prepared me for graduate school.

(In the ad agency, they call ad layouts without the copy "Greek" even though they use lorum ipsum. My first week here after I graduated, about 2.5 years ago, I brought someone a layout with lorum ipsum and they asked me why it was in Greek-I did not yet know the industry term-and I said, "it's not, it's Latin". Needless to say, that art director found it hilarious and I quickly learned the lingo).

How have you applied (or not) your Classics major in your field of work?

Over the past year I’ve worked as an associate at a Portland-based consulting firm serving primarily nonprofit clients, and in that capacity I’ve had the good fortune of working with a number of fantastic organizations across a variety of Maine communities. It’s been challenging – and fun – in a different way, with a stronger emphasis on general organization, attention to detail, and strong writing skills; again, Classics had prepared me well. A few evenings a week, I would also make a trip up the coast from Portland to work in a special capacity as a Latin tutor for a local private school.

In addition to keeping me engaged with the Classics, my job as a tutor helped me to brush up on my language skills. This proved crucial, as I ultimately made the decision to pursue graduate study in the Classics. The department was tremendously helpful throughout the process, from the first exploratory discussions through to the end. I relied on Bowdoin’s faculty to guide me during the application cycle and, when good news came, in evaluating my admission offers. I came out of the process with a dream-come-true scenario.