When I was growing up, I remember being absolutely fascinated by historical literature (AKA loved Percy Jackson). My school encouraged us all to study the past and from the ages of around 5 - 10, I studied the Aztecs, Celts, Romans, Egyptians and Greeks. We were able to try out arts, crafts, literature and I even remember we learnt how to write instructions by teaching someone how to carry out the mummification process. Between the reading, family visits to museums and a lot of school projects - it was safe to say that I loved the Ancient World from a very young age!
When I started the UK equivalent of middle school, I started studying Latin. I enjoyed it but I definitely wouldn't have called it my favourite subject - with that title belonging to Chemistry one year, Drama the next, then English etc. That being said, when given the opportunity, I decided to drop Drama and a few other subjects and decided to take up Ancient Greek for the first time. To be completely honest, after the first lesson, I almost gave up. I found the new alphabet, the small class size, and the scale of work to cover, all very intimidating. It was then that I turned to the internet and began to teach myself basic Greek grammar and vocabulary until a favourite game of Greek class was 'Can we catch Katy out?'. The three other students would put together lists of tricky vocab and try to challenge me. I loved it.
Since then, I have pushed and pushed myself within Classics to gain as much experience as possible. I travel as much as possible to ancient sites, write blog posts and even started a meme page dedicated to Classics. Some of the stand out experiences along the way include my first archaeological dig, tutoring Greek and Latin online in quarantine, and finally meeting other people who share my love for the Ancient World. However, by far, the best moment was finding out I had an offer to study Classics at Cambridge University.
I cannot wait to follow this path further as part of SASA, knowing both that I still have a long journey ahead of me and also that I will never grow out of dressing up!