Hello and welcome to Regional Classics, a podcast from the University of Oxford,
which reflects and celebrates the diverse voices of Oxford classicists past and present from different parts of the UK.
All the while creating thought provoking conversations,
breaking down barriers and showing that if you want to study the ancient world, any aspect of politics,
history, art, science, literature, culture and much more than you can observe,
classicists do not and need not come from only a narrow cross-section of society.
This episode features three oxford classicists from the southwest of England, an area recently identified as one experiencing classics poverty.
That is a lack of access to classical subjects in schools.
Joining me today to talk about their own pathways into classics from this underrepresented area are Dr. Rebecca Armstrong,
an associate professor in classical languages and literature at St Hilda's College.
Molly Gibson Mee a former classics and English student at Oriel College, where she was also a master's student.
You might know her YouTube channel, Molly at Oxford, which has over 11000 subscribers.
And Justin Vyvyan Jones, an undergraduate at St.
Hugh's College, where he studies Classics and German, and he's in his third year.
Thank you all so much for taking part in this podcast.
So, Justin, can you tell me which part of the southwest do you come from and what was your first encounter with the ancient world?
OK, so I am from the Brendon Hills, which is in Somerset, kind, just below Exmoor,
and I grew up for the services my life with and around the Bridgewater area.
That is just amazing. And then when I was about 10 miles out to the Brenden's,
so I grew up through village schools and I went to Kingsmead Community school a state comp in Wivelivscombe
And then I did my sixth form in Ricard Huish here in Taunton first, which was a really good question.
So I'm really lucky in that my parents were always very big on making that kind of part of our lives.
So ever since I can't remember we've been traipsing up down hill forts and places to museums and stuff,
but within the classroom, I guess, primary school schooling, first encounter,
I remember doing creative stuff with the Egyptians and Greeks and Romans and it was
all really colourful and exciting so that stands out still in my memory and secondary school.
I don't really remember much to do with the ancient world directly, although in a slightly bored afternoon,
I did just pick up the Illiad from the school library and I was the first to grab it since 1998 and just started reading it and loved it.
And so I think that was part of my early journey towards classics.
But in terms of actual study of the ancient world proper,
I was on the open day at Richard Huish and I just happened to bump into a fantastic teacher called Sam Desmond in the corridor there.
And we just got talking. And basically, yeah, she introduced me to classical civilisation, which is the A Level she taught.
And it sounded really fun, really exciting. And I thought, you know what, I'll give it to go.
And I was planning to do French, German and maths before I could squeeze a cheeky bit of Class Civ ive in that, you know, a bit of diversion, a bit of fun
But if I can focus on my proper subject at the end of the year, within the week,
I was completely in love with it, head over heels and just never really look back.
And then Sam and the whole community, it really was a community of classicists there, realised that for subjects like that exams are kind of a formality.
It was like just being there in the classroom. That was the thing. You were there. They were fantastically supportive.
And that kind of gave the energy and the drive, which got me to apply to Oxford in combination with German,
which is something I've been very lucky to have since about year seven,
because Kingsmede, one thing does really well as it gets everyone learning languages.
I think that really kind of got me firing on all cylinders I'm now using to study the ancient world.
But yes, I'd say there's been a fair few points in my life which kind of mean what could be described as the first entrance.
But yes, in a way, it's kind of always been there, but also has to be like those points where it's come in.
Yes, so my experience is similar in some ways, but different in a lot of others,
I remember probably doing similar stuff at primary school vaguely, but I think the first real encounter I had with it in school was in year 10.
We had I was doing history and we had a module called The History of Medicine.
And we spent one class doing about Roman medicine and hygiene and looking at aqueducts and the Roman Romans, some things.
And my teacher, when she was organising the school trip,
for history decided that Rome somehow tied in to our overall course based on that one lesson and organised a school trip to Rome.
So we actually went to Rome and year 10. But I knew absolutely nothing about anything I was looking at.
And I have this memory in my mind of being stood in the forum, in the pouring rain and having no idea what I was looking at.
and just feeling really miserable, which is obviously very frustrating to look back on because I was surrounded by obviously the forum.
But that was the first encounter I had with it. I it wasn't offered in my secondary school.
And then I think outside of school I remember seeing it extensively in the Percy Jackson books.
I read them when I was in school, absolutely loved them. And so when it came to choosing my A-levels which were at separate further education college,
because my school and lots of schools in the area didn't have a sixth form, we were choosing on A-levels.
And like what you said, Justin, I was I had my three main ones.
I knew I wanted to do English, so I chose English literature, English language.
And then I also went to I went to a language school and they said that French was a good thing to do.
So I did French. And then I was choosing a fourth one because this was back when asked AS levels existed.
And I thought I would use the fourth option as a way to take a chance on a different subject.
So I saw that classical civilisation was my level and I knew that I enjoyed that from the Percy Jackson books.
But I thought, OK, I can do that for a year, have a bit of fun, and then drop it and focus on my main three subjects.
And then I fell in love with classics. I had an amazing teacher. She she was also incredible and really brought it to life.
And we started off with Cicero and Roman law.
So it wasn't it was immediately like something that could have easily been a bit boring for a bunch of new A level students.
But she made it so exciting and so engaging and I just absolutely loved it.
And so that was like the first real encounter I had had with it as a subject.
And this is all to say that I was this was all happening in North Devon.
I come from North Devon and I went to a secondary school.
state comprehension school, and then I went to a further education college in the area.
Right, so I also have north devon connections in my first half, my childhood was spent there as well,
and that is probably where I was when I first encountered Classics through the The Usborne Guide to the Ancient World, which had three in one.
It was the ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ancient Rome. And I read it and read it and read it.
And I had no interest in Greece or Rome, it was all about Egypt.
But as I got older, I, you know, sort of became a kind of the classic interests, I suppose,
the the Greek myths and read Roger Lansing Greene's versions of them and various other slightly more modern versions.
And I remember at primary school, we were allowed to write a story for some reason and mine turned into an epic about an escaped slave called Marcus,
which I was allowed to stay in at lunch break to finish my magnum opus.
So that was that was quite good. But differently from you guys, at secondary school,
this was back in the days of government funded scholarships to go to private schools.
So I went to an independent school. So I actually started learning Latin and Greek at secondary school and well,
actually started learning Latin and then rather later started learning Greek.
And that was I mean, I was kind of already interested in the stories and the cultures, but that was where I got my first taste of languages.
And I loved Latin and Greek always kind of terrified me and continues to terrify me a bit.
But I also really loved it. And by the time I got to A level, sort of numbers of takers had dropped off.
So Greek in particular was basically me one other girl and a teacher in an attic learning Greek, which is quite sort of romantic flavour to it.
But in terms of kind of sense, like more widely kind of classics being something to do,
I don't remember sort of feeling like it, it just didn't feel like a path that many people knew about.
And if they did know about it, they were kind of a bit like, why?
Why would you want to do that? So it did.
Yeah, it did. Kind of you know, it was not until I got to Oxford where suddenly there were loads of other people doing classics that I thought,
OK, it's not actually a completely weird thing to be interested in.
Yeah. Do you feel that perhaps the rural background of where most of you guys were from influenced
your own feelings about the subject because you weren't around as many people studying it,
although I know you've all mentioned great teachers and other influences on you.
Did that form an additional kind of barrier to the subject?
In some ways, yeah, I think I think that's right.
That if you if you if you don't belong to an area where that's kind of well, let's be honest, it's not mainstream anywhere anymore,
but in where it's sort of more common, I think that that can I, you know, make you feel that like you're super square.
no mates person, at risk of being that.
But conversely, and this might be worth going off piste, so stop me.
It's taught me about this.
But personally, I think that having grown up in the countryside gives me a real kind of a sort of affinity with an awful lot of classical texts.
So I've ended up writing about Virgil's Georgics and I'm not I'm not a farmer and neither was he come to that.
But, you know, there's a sense in which that that kind of sense of like not being embarrassed about talking about countryside,
not having to say, oh, well, it's all about poetry, about poetry was a kind of political allegory or something that actually say no.
I mean, there's this joy in the rural life, which, again,
I'm not trying to say to say that most often in the nineteen eighties or something like Italy know whatever the fifties B.C,
but so got the dates wrong. But anyway. But it's yeah.
I do think that actually you know, one can be very positive about what coming from a non urban non SES background can, can bring to classics.
Yeah. I mean I guess that kind of building on from that because we're kind of slightly from outside the traditional bubble of where classicists tend to
come from because we're a little bit more communities don't necessarily get as represented as much or where there's not as much of outreach.
But does give us that kind of perspective that, yeah,
what writers like Virgil did have where you kind of the country kid that comes in and sees this culture and sort of falls in love with it,
but also has this kind of perspective of slightly from outside. I see differently. And that kind of feeds into something I think classics generally does,
which is it just makes you to take a little step back and view what's around even more objectively,
just through the lens of, you know, how do we look at another culture then? How does that help us look at our own?
All right. Yeah, I think I mean, obviously, my situation back then would be different for people coming from the same area.
Now, I think purely just because of the AS system and allowing people to take a chance on a subject they might not have otherwise taking a chance on.
And so I think because that has been sort of taken away with this new A level system, I think it people need to be more aware of classics as a subject,
because until I was choosing my A-levels, I didn't know about it as being a subject.
I knew I liked the Percy Jackson books. I knew that I enjoyed looking around Rome, but I didn't I didn't know about it as a subject.
And even now, like when I talk to people from around here and I said I studied classics like often
they would take that to mean classic literature like Jane Austen or like Shakespeare,
I think because I was always associated with English they thought that was what I was studying.
And so I had to explain, you know what I say. I study classics, which is the study of the ancient Mediterranean.
So I think having to talk through that each time meant that I always felt a little bit like separate from my Decon
life that I felt my Devon life and my Oxford classics life like never really connected in that way,
but there were instances when they did. So one of my favourite pieces of work is Dart by Alice Oswald.
So I study English and Classics and there was a lot of classical reception involved in my degree.
And as part of that, I looked at Dart, which is about the River dart, which obviously flows through dartmoor
and she uses a lot of sort of classical voices and classical reception and
And that's why I felt like a real crossover. And then when I was like translating Eclogues for Latin core, I think it was, you know,
going through all the different names of different trees and things, I was like, why do I feel at home suddenly with the Eclogues?
So I think there are kind of various to the classics in this area.
I think particularly the not having the system and not being taught earlier than A-levels very often, particularly in state schools.
I think that is a barrier. But I also think then when I am able to connect this little rural Devon background with the classics,
that's why I felt most engaged with it and most able to really connect both halves of my life in that way.
Now, that's super interesting geographical background, I think,
has influenced all of you and your various academic interests and that affinity with classics,
you raise also a great point Molly about the name classics and about what it means to different people and how people interpret that.
And sometimes it influences their view of our subject. And also what we do as classicists.
It's a big topic, but what are people's thoughts on the name of classics, the rebranding,
and how we can try and make it more accessible even to those students who, as we've said, sadly, aren't necessarily able to study it at school?
I mean, I don't mind like jumping in here. I think I mean, obviously the classics has its own.
as a subject, it has its own history, its own legacies and its own problems.
I think immediately that when you determine something as being classic,
I think often people assume that it's just Greek and Roman languages and literature because that's where it originated back in the
Eighteen hundreds. Nineteen hundred. But the classics, as we know today, particularly the Oxford course, has broadened it so much beyond that.
And there are so many different areas now to look at. I think it's become a lot broader,
but I think perhaps there needs to be sort of more done to bring an awareness of
just what classics actually is now and less of a connection with particularly,
I think I mean, I know that the languages are very important and I very much appreciated the chance to learn them, both of them at Oxford.
But I think that can be quite intimidating when that's the forefront of what we know as classics,
particularly if you're coming from an area that doesn't ever often offer Latin and Greek.
I didn't have Latin or Greek offered at a level at all. It wasn't listed, there were barely enough people doing French.
And so I think like, yeah, I think that can be a bit intimidating. And it certainly was for me when I first started at Oxford,
I was a bit intimidated at first with the idea of learning so much language when I'm with other people who had been doing it for quite a long time.
And so I think, yeah, just really opening people's eyes to what classics is and how much there is encompassing within that,
rather than being focussed on a very small minority of classics, which is Greek and Latin languages and literature.
And I actually found that quite interesting, that my master's was specifically called Greek and or Latin languages and literature.
But I could never really say to people I did a masters in classics because that just wasn't what it is,
because it was a lot more specific than what we now consider classics to be when that in fact was the origins of classics.
So I think, yeah, just making people aware of how broad it is and how much more there is going on under the surface.
So I guess one of the great strengths of classics is that is just so, at least as it's taught now, incredibly diverse.
I mean, you could do everything from, you know, gender studies through to archaeology and from linguistics through to the study of poetry and oratory.
And I guess you could come up with something like ancient world studies or something.
But even so, I guess this whole.
Subject is something that is, in a sense a little bit arbitrary,
like we have this period that we use as a springboard to talk about things like pertaining to humanity in general and bringing in sort of parallels,
especially in the joint schools like classics in Oriental Studies, for example, has a really rich degree.
But Classics is probably a little bit more helpful than the Oxford title Literae Humaniores
But again, that is the kind of thing that it doesn't quite do what it says on the tin.
You need to sort of spend a few sentences unpacking it once you tell anyone what degree the title is.
I'm not sure if that much more to add on that in the sense.
I mean, I think certainly I can I mean,
I see a lot a lot in the students that I teach of a lot of people who are always assuming that somebody else knows more than they do.
And and I think that that know, for people who arrive at university and begin studying one of the ancient languages,
you can see why they might they might feel that way,
because there will be some people who have already done the A Level, for instance, and a smaller number who have done A-levels in Latin and Greek.
And I suppose what I would like to emphasise here is, is that I think that that that is taken into into account.
And I think that, you know, the support that's given is a very positive thing.
And I'm sure it doesn't work 100 percent of the time. But very, very largely, people have started out feeling perhaps at a slight disadvantage,
actually come up very quickly to to a level where where they are very comfortable working with the texts in the ancient languages.
So while absolutely I'm all for and I think we definitely should emphasise the the breadth and variety and diversity of the course,
which which is absolutely true and of the subject more more widely,
I was kind of surprised because this is my thing as a, as a Latinist, that I'll really put put in a word for this,
that, you know, that the value of studying things in the languages in which they were they were written.
It's not the only way in which they're studied, but it's it's you know,
it's a really fascinating gateway and kind of learning about what sorts of things about how much
culture is contained within language and how this sort of idea of what does such and such a word mean.
And you suddenly discover that there isn't a one on one correspondence at all.
And in different contexts, you know, this word can mean different things and it rather depends who's writing when they're writing
and all these other kind of complexities which which emerge from studying in language.
in the original language as well as also making use of translations into English is one of the really valuable things.
I think, regardless of whether you've studied these languages before or not,
when you get to it at university level there's a whole new way of approaching things that can open out to you.
And how, Justin and Molly, how have your experiences with language been influenced by the fact that you have done joint honours degrees,
that you've both done English and German alongside classics, despite not necessarily having the classical languages beforehand?
How have you found those combinations?
So as I touched on before, I'm really lucky to come from a school that really gets people having contact with language learning.
So everyone at Kingsmead does at least one GCSE in French, German or Spanish, which although they're not like classical languages,
they're still languages like there was like a gateway towards carrying elements
of developing that bit of your mind if you want to chase things that way.
So although I hadn't done classical languages here, so before coming here, I actually found it was kind of something I could adapt to quite readily.
And I think something that we haven't quite emphasised enough yet is that Oxford
actually does have really good provision for people who come here without languages.
There's course 2, to which anyone who's done classical languages before has their own version of the course.
But there are specific examples of specific sort of papers and expectations for people who have not got the languages already.
So, you know, when I came to see my first wave of exams,
I had like papers that were designed for people who had just literally started Latin in the year before,
which was which is good, says it's like it's a it's a completely valid and dignified space and it's actually loaded with a bit of clout to boost your marks if you do well
relative to what you turn up with,
it's not just how good is your Latin at this point, but yeah, it's absolutely, really loved it.
I mean, I'm a bit of languages person anyway. I do way too many languages, about six.
Loving it, but, yeah, so you start off, you set up you have one class every morning with a regular group of people who are also learning.
And what actually does is it really quite a bit of community, within Course II
to which I really like so pretty much all of us from state school backgrounds.
There's a little bit of overlap.
So I've got one friend who's wonderful, he basically taught himself Greek and Latin and course one that that's that's what a magnificent exception.
But that's an exception. Most of us from state backgrounds will still be together,
but we'll be in the same rooms and same classes with the same teachers and a really great sense of sub community.
And then there's the pages that link different years together.
So one thing I've actually found is that having this sort of it's not even a subculture, but it's something that's kind of new.
course ii, the state classics kind of group, is really good.
It's really affirming. It's really dynamic. And again, it's really diverse. I've got a lot in common.
But also there's people who are really into sort of looking at sort of societies and how we think about ourselves as some people who just really,
really like concrete! And there's people like me who just want to come and do a bit of everything and find the most ridiculous links.
Being a joint honours student - Classics and Germany is fantastic because with joint honours you're
trying not to drop all the plates you got spending at once, but generally it's a really sort of rich and enriching thing.
And you can pretty much always bring something new to the table as well in terms of discussions, because you have insights from another subject.
But yeah, control of language really enriching here.
And yeah, as Rebecca was saying, there is no better way to put yourself into the mindset of a culture you're studying
than by looking at the way that they use words and think about language and writing,
how they sort of identified themselves with these labels, how these labels change and are appropriated and received across time.
How we use terms in our own language is absolutely fantastic.
Yeah. So I've always said that classics and English course II is the best degree Oxford and I still stand by that.
I think it takes like all the best elements from classics, all the best elements from English and just combines them so well.
One thing I really appreciated about the structure, of course, to classics, English, especially with so we were we didn't do mods
We did prelims, but like we did always two sets of exams.
But the first one was more like just like entrance exams into the rest of the course.
So the way to think that, well, I have a couple those too.
I mean, you have a preliminary year where you almost exclusively focus on learning whichever language you've chosen to do.
Some colleges will have bits and pieces of English and perhaps some classics essays here and there.
But generally your focus is on the language and then you have exams at the end of your first year where you kind of
pass them and then you can start the full Classics and English course one having done that year first.
And I really like that because and then I had that year to just fall in love with Latin and really
I was amazed by how quickly I was able to go from nothing basically to to actually translate the Aeneid.
And every time I start to translate things that were more complicated, I just got so excited and I just, yeah.
Really fell in love with the intricacies of the language. And I always had to know why something was the way it was, so in reading classes.
I would always be the person stopping like. But why is this an ablative? Like what was it doing, what, ablative is this?!
And I'm trying to figure out and really piece together the sentence and what was going on.
And I yeah, I really I really love that. And I think that's the that I personally really enjoyed spending that year
focussing almost entirely on the language and then going through the rest of it.
I didn't do Greek until my master's, but you can do it as part of your undergrad for Classics and English.
You can do it as one of your final options. And one of my friends did do that. And so, yeah, even though it's the joint honours degree,
you're still given the same language training and you're still given the opportunity to do both Greek and Latin at various points,
particularly for course II. And so I really appreciated the opportunities that gave me.
And actually one of our papers in our finals, the epic paper,
a part of that was comparing an original passage from the Aeneid with a translation of it.
And normally it was Dryden's translation. And he does such wild things with translation.
And you basically write a mini commentary of how he's translated it and what choices he's made and and how how that's come across.
And that really made me appreciate what a sort of skill.
And how much decision making really does go into translation and from then on, I've just really enjoyed looking at different translations and really,
you know, feeling out exactly why they've made certain choices and certain things like that.
And it formed a part of my master's dissertation as well.
So considering that I didn't do any lessons beforehand, I didn't go to any of the summer schools, mainly because I couldn't afford them.
I didn't do any Latin at A level or school or anything.
And and to go from that to where I was at the end of my master's, it really did feel like an achievement.
And I know that I wouldn't have got anywhere else except at Oxford on the classics course.
So I do think Oxford Classics and English. I love it. I still love it.
I still promote it all the time as being such a wonderful degree,
particularly at Oxford because I think it's just so well out and the options and the things you can look at just really exciting.
you know, so wonderful to hear, and especially after having left for more than a year to still have that same passion,
not just be a subject, but for that particular course. Indeed, it's infectious.
I could feel the joy from here. Rebecca,
I'd be interested to hear as well about your experience of Oxford is obviously as a tutor and as someone who therefore interacts both with students,
but also does your own research. What have been some of your favourite aspects of that combination of your current classics experience?
Well, one one thing that was quite satisfying, having mentioned earlier, my interest in Virgil and the Georgics,
after it took me a long time for various reasons, including having babies.
But I finally finished a couple of years ago. The book I've been working on for a long time about plants in Virgil,
and I think it is kind of serendipitous in some ways that I didn't finish it earlier than I did,
even though in other ways it's quite, quite frustrated not not to have got along with it,
because I think one of the one of the things that's happening now with with with a lot of the students
coming up and is that there's much greater interest in environmentalism and the environment more broadly.
And whereas in the past, sometimes when I kind of perhaps I wish I taught Molly the Eclogues rather than perhaps some of
my other students look at me blankly when I try to talk about can you visualise a beech tree?
And, you know, but I think now there really is much more of that kind of growing sense of interest in and all that sort of thing.
And, yeah, kind of real enthusiasm for exploring ways in which I mean,
just going back to one of the things that Justin said, struck me about the ways in which what kind of current interest concerns,
fears can in some ways be mapped on and reflected in readings of the ancient world.
So that's a sort of quite a specific thing. But I think more generally, I mean, I definitely, as a tutor,
kind of really enjoy the the sort of differences between my students and the way in which,
you know, you get you get really different views from different people.
And, you know, you might you might have somebody from, if you like,
the kind of background where the really stereotypical I don't they've been to Eton or something like that.
But they in a room with six other people who have definitely not been to Eton.
And just this sort of sense of that kind of interaction and the growing realisation
you get amongst everyone about the differences between between them and the differences,
therefore their assumptions and their attitudes to the subject, but also in these kind of real sense of actually things level out a lot.
And this is just really interesting to see that the sort of dynamics emerging
between people and the way that way that some people sort of instantly,
much more ready to take, I don't know, say a kind of political view on things.
And others are kind of interested in artistic representations, all these things can kind of come in in together.
And that kind of sense of sort a melting pot feeling that goes on in classes is is
really nice when you want to kind of take a break from telling people why it's in the Ablative.
Well, I wish we had a class together to talk about plants,
because that was one thing that when I was trying to learn Latin and I just loved looking in the dictionary looking for different plant words.
And when I was lucky enough to go to Pompeii seeing an actual buxus, this or a strawberry tree or a box hedge, I was extremely excited.
No one else was. But I thought that that was very cool. So that's great to hear.
I think we've all mentioned parts of how of what classics means to us and also what it means to people at the moment.
But can we talk a bit more about about the very current relevance of the subject,
which we've already said is so broad and encompasses so many different things?
But to those people that ask and I'm sure we've all had the question from people in our lives, you know, why bother?
Why should we study classics? What would you say?
Why? Why is it relevant? Well, it's like number one, it's brilliant.
It's absolutely worth and validating in itself because it will take on this madcap journey through all times,
all places from even the basic course of Mods takes you even studying like the cultural attitudes
of 6th century B.C. Persia through to the sort of art of third century North Africa.
And you have all these charismatic and dynamic, brilliant,
utterly awful people that you sort of step into their shoes and try to see the world from their perspective.
And you go headlong tackling some of the biggest questions of human existence
and addressing the big questions that we have at the moment as a society and
how we can inform our understanding of ourselves and our situation and our
background through the ancient world and how through the ancient world is being received,
which is another part of classics that doesn't get that popularised and so on one level, it's just fantastic.
And if you find this kind of thing even remotely interesting as an idea, I would really, really recommend chasing it up, seeing what it can offer you,
whether you're a fan of cool pots or agricultural settlement organisation or poetics or whatever, actually classics is really, really employable.
It teaches you yeah, cool stuff about the ancient world
But what it really teaches you is things like the ability to analyse and process the huge amounts of information really quickly and come to reasoned.
Well, argued judgements. It teaches you to interface with complex and contradictory and very nuanced points of view.
It gives you a sense of empathy and an ability to appreciate where other arguments are coming from,
whether that's people you're in the room that you're yet you have subsets of
different assumptions and you sort of reach different conclusions to them, whether you're get respect for this course.
But also just looking at something that is on first reading Abhorrently awfully like Propertius who just makes me sick to the stomach when I read.
him sometimes. But then if you just try to think, OK, what if I was you know, what if I'd grown up in the world that this person grew up in,
what if I sort of tried to strip away my cultural assumptions? Can I see anything redemptive?
Usually not with Propertius, but, you know,
it's just the exercise of being able to put yourself into another perspective and trying to unbuild your own assumptions or skills,
like just being disciplined, working to schedules. You have a lot of deadlines as a classicist and the ability to crunch through
and learn languages and address all these really diverse types of information.
These are all really, really good employable skills and these are really things that employers do look for.
I was really privileged to work with the Oxford University Classics Society earlier this year,
and we had some people come in from the careers service and talking about basically the fact that, yeah,
a degree which actually teaches you directly to do a job is great and valuable in itself is a wonderful thing to do,
but a degree that teaches you a vastly broad skill set and teaches you to communicate convincingly, brilliantly, eloquently.
This is again a really useful skill. You basically learn to process, you learn to present, you learn to argue reason, think through things sideways,
and to wrap this up with a way of sort of communicating and presenting and developing your
ideas through dialogue that actually stands in really good stead for a whole bunch of jobs.
So just thinking about people who are leaving classics right now that I know some of my college fathers are going that year about that sort of like,
you know, sort of like a buddy system ato help the first years along and then we stay mates
Makes some way through. He's going off to work at Goldman Sachs.
I've got some amazing friends that she's going on to, I think commercial law firms, law, finance and all that sort of things.
we have a classicist in number ten. We've got.
Yeah, I know. I can see the reactions, the audio can't hear and but jobs all over the place,
really diverse employment markets and obviously the skill set to learn the language and interface in other cultures is also fantastic.
If you then want to go into further study and move into different places abroad.
So essentially, there is kind of that there is the reason going incredibly way back to the start of this tangent,
that simply studying the ancient world is brilliant. And if you want to do it, do it.
You only live once. Why not study something?
That's absolutely fantastic, but. Also, it's really employable, it's really hands on, it's really sensible, it's good,
and really it just gives you the confidence to back yourself and just get out there
and take challenges on and have discussions and learn things and just get on with it.
So that's definitely very much a degree worth doing. Yes.
So in terms of like how classics is relevant today, one thing that my dad always likes to jokingly say is, oh, it's all in the past.
It doesn't matter because it's all in the past. And he always winds me up whenever he says that, because a lot of my degree,
especially in English, is looking at how classics has been received by later.
I think also, especially with the APGRD the archive of performances of Greek and Roman drama.
There's a big focus on classical reception, particularly also. That's why I was so excited to do my master's there as well, to pursue that even further.
But classical reception is basically how the classics have been received by the text and on this can be at any point throughout history.
But I always love doing it when it's present day texts like modern modern text.
And if you look hard enough, classics is still everywhere today.
And I love examining how it's been used both for good and bad and how it's still quite present around us today.
So one of my favourite bits of work I did throughout my undergrad as part of my dissertation was reading this book of poetry by Jerry Shap
Which was the metamorphosis, I think I think that's what it was called,
but it was a book of poetry and she wrote it after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and she used Ovid's Metamorphoses to really engage with
her for her thoughts and her feelings about being diagnosed with breast cancer cells mutating and and how she saw the world and things like that.
And it's one of the most beautiful pieces of poetry I've read.
And I loved reading it.
And I think that is a very personal example of how classics can still be used to process the thoughts and feelings and emotions today.
But yeah, the classics everywhere. And that's where I get the most enjoyment out of it is looking at it today in terms of employability.
I did an undergraduate degree and a master's degree in classical subjects at Oxford, and I got a job.
So I currently work for Murray Edwards College in Cambridge in the communications team,
creating content for prospective applicants to help them with the process of applying to Oxford and Cambridge top universities.
And yeah, all the things you were saying just in like I think employers are increasingly recognising how important transferable skills are.
And I think especially when you're younger, there's a lot of talk going around.
It was the same for English, like why do an English degree, why do a history degree?
And I think it might be sort of tempting to do a subject where there's a very obvious job at the end.
But like you said, even people doing classics will go on to stuff like law.
So you don't necessarily have to do law to become a lawyer.
I know lots and lots of people who've gone on to become lawyers after doing classics that so many different jobs.
transferable skills - people do definitely recognise them, particularly with a college degree and particularly for somewhere like Oxford.
People recognise the amount of work that goes into that, the amount of detail that you have to process.
For me as a communications team, I was able to use a lot of the work I've done,
particularly presenting because there were a lot of opportunities to present my work
throughout my undergrad on my master's actually talking through these things,
which for a lot of people, if you're presenting,
particularly for an audience that may not be overly familiar with classics or may even be classicists
but they might not be familiar with what you're doing. That was often the case for me in classical reception.
If I ever presented what I was working on to people who might be working on something within classics completely different,
you have to make it understandable, approachable, things like that.
And so for me, working in a communications role, a lot of that carried over from classics and also with the languages really breaking down a sentence,
how a sentence can be translated, how things can be interpreted, how to do prose comp.
That helped me kind of think about how to word my sentences, how to create my own languages.
So am I like like pieces of text, I should say.
And yeah. So I found a lot of the skills,
like going from my time at Oxford both undergrad and post grad to have transferred over into the sphere that I want to go into,
which is like communications in particular with higher education.
But there are so many different career paths, particularly for classicists, that it's just unbelievably broad.
So I think I as I sort of get further away from my time as a student, I know it's only been like a year.
But, you know, as I move further away from the student realm,
I'm starting to really appreciate the value in doing a degree that you really enjoy and that you
really found value in for itself because there are so many transferable skills that come from that.
And so I was worried at first when I was choosing to apply to university,
I'm going to be doing classics and English, which are two subjects that people long said are unemployable.
Basically, I'm really worried about this, what should I be doing? But the more I sort of move more into the of job realm,
I realise actually I'm really glad I spend that time at university doing something that I loved as much as I loved my degree.
Again, best degree Oxford still say it! And so I really appreciate having that time doing something that I really enjoyed and and picking
up all these different skills which have helped me in in the job that I currently have a job.
So I will have in the future, I guess, as the one who entered the vortex and has not yet left classics, I'm a slight outlier here
But I certainly endorse everything that's been said about that sense of studying classics.
Certainly doesn't shut doors. It gives you a whole range of doors to look at.
And if you choose not to open them, end up doing graduate work and getting temporary jobs and then eventually getting permanent jobs in classical academia,
that's there's not many of us who end up doing this. Relieved to know that's also a possibility and unsurprisingly, therefore,
it also very much kind of agreed with both Molly and Justin and their encouragement to think about what you find interesting.
I think, you know, studying anything is worthwhile if it's what you find interesting and doing something
thoroughly and well and working hard at it and succeeding and sometimes failing,
but making progress. All these kinds of things are incredibly valuable in life.
And this makes me sound old
But that sometimes when there's a lot of this kind of conversation about relevance, what is meant isn't really relevance,
because what we've just been talking about is absolutely how classics is relevant and
kind of always has been and always will be and in all sorts of different ways.
What I mean there is is it precisely about something that you could come across on tik tok or whatever it might be nowadays?
And and I think that's quite insulting to young people.
I think they're quite well able to be interested in their every day and what they see around them all the
time and also be interested in things that happened two thousand years ago or however long it might be.
You don't you know, you don't have to sort of don the Tteeds and the leather elbow patches in order to study classics.
I think it's you know, it's very much a subject that's open to and welcomes all sorts of different attitudes and backgrounds and approaches.
And I hope that's really encouraging for our listeners to hear as well that this is
open and accessible and an inviting subject and an inviting place to come and study.
If we can.
Finally, briefly, just think about our listeners who might be listening from North Devon or Cornwall or Dorset or another part of the south west.
And what would you say to them? What would be your one message,
your one takeaway to either your past self or to a prospective student now from
those areas thinking about maybe maybe doing something classical at Oxford?
Well, one of the things that I've heard from people at home that absolutely breaks me is I just don't think Oxford's
the place for me or I don't think classics is for me because it's too posh or it's too sort of otherworldly.
An ivory tower. It is for you. It is exactly for you.
Reach out, grab it. It is brilliant. Classics is what you make it, especially Oxford Classics and Oxford is this thriving, mad,
diverse place that basically if you can just chuck a shedload of enthusiasm at it, you will thrive.
It's about the most buzzing, diverse place I've been in my life.
There are so many sort of subcultures and social microclimates, and just groups everywhere,
these brilliant people that you will find a place that fits you in.
Yeah, I'm really lucky I have a fantastic group of friends all over the place doing all sorts of things.
And I've got involved societies and sports and I've really learnt to come out of my shell,
but also just be more confident in who I am and what I like. I've really grown as a person at Oxford.
It's definitely made me who I am and I'm really, really grateful for that.
And what I would say is just look into it, give it a go,
because there will be something that will definitely be something that you can bring to the table that will be unique.
And there's definitely a huge amount that you can find in the ancient world that can bring things out of you that you wouldn't have even expected.
So I'd say absolutely it is for you. Go for it. I think that's such a big thing to say.
But I think a lot of what I'm going to be saying is that basically repeating what Justin was saying which is if you're thinking about doing classics,
but you think that you come from a background, which is not what you consider classics to normally be, but you're interested in the ancient world.
You're interested in whatever part of it you might have come across so far. There's there's even more to it than that.
There's so much involved in classics. And I think the Oxford Classics faculty has so many amazing people connected to it.
And it's it's been such a pleasure to have studied there for five years in total.
And I think, yeah, there's there are so many.
I think the other thing as well is to research the classics courses themselves, but also look into the joint honours courses.
I know I'm probably a bit biased again here,
but I think a real highlight of the classics faculty is the the amount that it focuses on the interdisciplinary connections.
And it's not just like half of one degree and half of the other, like they really do make the effort to bring both halves together.
And I think Oxford has a variety of different joint honours courses that if you're thinking, oh,
I really love English, I don't know whether I should be sort of adding this new subject.
You might not have a lot of experience with like that. The I think considering a joint honours course, particularly, of course, at Oxford,
I think they really do allow you to maybe stick with something you're more familiar with and you also love,
but also allow you to jump into classics and all that that has to offer the so many different branches and areas.
And I didn't know any I didn't even know that Percy Jackson technically was classical reception when I first read it in year 8 or9.
But it is. And people have written essays about the classical reception in Percy Jackson.
So I think like those classics all around you and there's so much going on in classics particularly at Oxford that if you want to explore a bit more,
I would highly recommend just looking on the course pages, doing your research and really thinking, actually giving it a go and applying to Oxford.
And I think, again, I just want to say, if I'm talking to my past self, the languages,
while they might be a bit intimidating at first, like before you've started studying them, I think the Oxford course really does.
I really appreciate the opportunity to be able to learn them. And it really opens so many doors and really opens up the ancient world in a
way that I didn't really know about when studying classical civilisation.
So don't be intimidated by the languages or be intimidated by what you think Latin might be.
But I would say really give it a shot and look into all the different options there are in the in the Oxford classics,
all the different courses, because that's just so much, so much that Justin like just said, really just give it a go,
take the opportunity and give it a go instead of being prominent advocates for exactly that that sort of sense of please,
please don't feel that it can't possibly be for somebody from the Southwest to come to Oxford and study classics.
as we're living proof that at least it's possible and indeed that it's possible to do it and enjoy it.
On that note, I want to say huge thank you to all three of our panellists,
for a fantastic exploration of their journey and everything that Classics has meant to them.
So far, so a huge Thank you, Justin, Molly and Rebecca for a fantastic discussion and conversation on this Regional Classics podcast.
Oh, thank you so much. Thank you.