Distinctly still do I remember applying to my transfer institutions while a sophomore (last year) student at Miami Dade College, Honors College, of the North Campus. I did not begin to draft my essays until the start of February, and on top of how late I began I also had to contend with the nerve-racking, if prudent, process of revising my essays under my literature professor’s supervision. Superfluous words, sentences, even whole paragraphs found their way to the furnace, and—A pain to ask still!—I had to conjure an answer to these most dreaded questions, “What will you do, Richard, with your education? Where will you end up?” It was all up in the air, but the only two points on which I was certain were: 1. I wanted to study Classics (that subject combining the ancient Greek and Roman worlds), and 2. I wanted it to be somewhere in New England.
Why Study Classics in New England?
I hear you asking now, “Why did you wish to study Classics in New England? Why not stay in Florida, endure less hassle, and continue your major in History?” My answer to this, in a word, is ad fontes, “To the sources!”
I elected to study Classics because, since my final year at Miami Lakes Educational Center, I began to study Latin autodidactically (on my own). I thought that the knowledge of that language was as fundamental as it was met with contempt there; I grew accustomed to the refrain of the “dead language” yet still believed that, as speakers of Spanish and even English, it behooved us to go back to the sources and recognize our origins. I found it difficult to countenance that we, the people of Miami, so fond of branding ourselves “Latin Americans” because a great many of us hail from that part of the globe once controlled by Romance-speaking powers, and which are consequently Romance speaking, fail to pay homage to this first word in our identity. It was this passion—and frustration—which drove me to study Latin, an hour a day, for two years, and which drove me to create the Latine Lege website while still studying in Miami Dade College.
It was also around this time when I learned of Classics as a discipline. It was the label under which the study of Latin was included, but also of Ancient Greek; classicists, those who practice in it, study not just those languages but also the ancient Mediterranean world in which they were spoken (though in some contexts, this also includes ancient India and China). Classics, however, could not be studied at Miami Dade College; it was exclusive to four-year institutions, and locally only the University of Miami hosted a Department of note. This meant that, to study Latin beyond Dade, I would have to look for Classics; to study Classics, I would have to look for higher institutions; to look for higher institutions with departments in Classics, I would have to look for those either on the West Coast or New England (very generally speaking). Desirous once more of going back to the sources and wanting a place with more history, I decided to apply for schools in New England.
That part of the country—constituted by the states of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine—had also captured my attention since the time of junior year in high school. I was captivated reading about the 19th-century Transcendentalist movement which emerged from it, on their emphasis on nature, suspicion of institutions on the nature of individuals, and belief in the inherent wholesomeness of the individual. That the region also produced, around the same time, America’s first literary icons—Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Emily Dickinson—also did not escape my notice. So of all the schools I applied to, it caught me by surprise somewhat, though a very much welcome one, that Amherst was the first to respond positively.
Accepting, Arriving to Amherst
I returned my decision just as positively on May 13th. I would spend the rest of the summer setting up my Amherst account and email, attending Pre-Orientation (for I was still, after all, a transfer student) and Orientation, and eagerly awaiting the coming of the new semester. What followed in Fall 2025 and Spring 2026, I shall leave for the next post, but for now I must write that, at Amherst College, I learned after so many years what it means to be human.