From her experience in high school, she was already familiar with the strength of the classics department at UVM.

“My rather mild love for the Latin language, and Greek and Roman history, grew and blossomed fully,” she said. “I can say without hesitation that it was my classics professors who solidified my passion for the subjects. They were and are unrivalled in their dedication to not only their subject, but to the students themselves.”

Her academic experience at UVM was impacted by nearly every professor in the department. She cites John Franklin as a particularly influential mentor. Mark Usher served on her senior thesis panel, Brian Walsh arranged for her to take a Latin course while she did a hiking trip in England, Jacques Bailly introduced her linguistics, and she describes Ange-line Chiu as “the most powerful positive force that could possibly exist” in the Honors College.

“Truly, I could write, play, and sing a complete musical theater piece to laud the entire classics department staff at UVM,” she said.

Hudson also appreciated the awareness among faculty of the reputation of classical writers as a misogynistic lot.

“Classics has the bleak association with white men learning from other, older white men, for the sake of upholding outdated models of education and societal structure. It’s a very worthwhile question to ask: Where are the people of color, and where are the women, in classics?”

Happily, she found that it wasn’t a taboo topic at UVM. She saw the educational environment was not about perpetuating damaging stereotypes; “it was about studying, discussing, questioning, and unpacking myriad topics that appear in ancient history—from warfare to sexuality, and from prepositional phrases to gender roles.”

But Hudson sees the classics not as an arcane study of ancient cultures that have no foothold in the present, but as remarkably relevant to current affairs and her future. She sees the study of Latin as useful in any profession.

“Studying languages in general is incredibly valuable—to understand the grammar, the history of our words and language structure allows us a clearer, broader view of communication. What could be more important in a world like ours?”