Hallo, zusammen! My name is Alex-Jaden, and I am a rising senior! I’m majoring in Classics, English Writing, and International Studies, pursuing certificates in African Studies and Transatlantic Studies, and minoring in German and Ancient Greek (that was a mouthful). Beyond the classroom, I am currently an Undergraduate Fellow of Pitt’s Humanities Center, in which I am doing research for my B.Phil. thesis on embodiment, cultural memory, and identity formation in Greco-Roman antiquity. This past year, I served as Student Faculty Assistant and Classical Languages tutor for the Classics department. Likewise, I worked as Associate Editor for The Fifth Floor, the English department’s e-magazine, this past Spring semester. This upcoming year, I will continue to be a tutor, but I will also serve as the Vice President of the (newly reestablished!) Zeta Tau chapter of Eta Sigma Phi and Student Lead for the Dietrich School’s Humanities Division, which I am so very excited for! In my free time, I love to spend time with my wonderful friends, read historical dramas, flâneur about, and not let life pass me by. In the future, I intend to go to grad school with the aim of, one day, teaching at a university.

It’s somewhat funny that I received my invite to write for Pitt Honors last week, as my program–Pitt in Munich–was a Maymester one! As such, technically, PiM is over, but I am actually staying in Germany for the month of June on my own! I am continuing on at the Goethe-Institut, a language learning and cultural immersion non-profit, to improve my German skills and cross-cultural sensitivities. Not to worry, though, I will be talking all about this past month and my solo traveling here in upcoming posts! Munich (or München auf Deutsch) is such a beautiful city, with a deep (and, sometimes, dark) history that I am so very eager to explore and to share with whomever may read these. It’s been a pleasure to learn German in Germany, and I cannot impart how effective it is to learn a language where it is the Muttersprache (“mother tongue”) of a nation rather than just in the classroom–seeing it in action, having people assume it is your first language as well, etc. It’s truly transformative.

I applied for Pitt in Munich for two reasons mostly. My father actually lived in Germany back in the late 80s/early 90s while stationed here in the U.S. Army (he wasn’t set on what he wanted to do in college, so he chose the military as a kind of ‘filler’). Growing up, he told me stories about speeding on the Autobahn in his souped-up VW (which, if I remember correctly, he totaled at some point) and the sights that he saw. As such, the country was always present in some recess of my mind. Secondly, as someone intending to pursue graduate study in Classics, knowledge of modern foreign languages–primarily, for purposes of scholarship–is paramount. All Ph.D. programs that I have seen have something along the lines of “reading fluency in German and French or Italian required,” and students are required to pass exams that test their reading and translating facility. As such, I thought, “‘Why not start in undergrad and go a bit further?'” And so, when I found out that Pitt in Munich was running this year after a (COVID-induced) hiatus, I knew that I needed to apply. And, I can wholeheartedly say that, I am beyond glad that I did! Our program was rigorous–4.5 hours of German instruction in German each day of the week, a reading-intensive culture course, and long excursions–but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

This introduction has gotten rather long in the tooth, so I will cut it here! I can’t wait to share more with you all soon!

Tschüss, Kommilitonen aus Pittsburgh!