Resources for Undergraduates
Undergraduate Profiles
Amelia Schmidt
![Dana Lee [photo]](photo.jpg)
Class of 2007
History and Classics
I pretty much knew I wanted to study History since I was six and memorizing the U.S. Presidential chronology. As for Classics, I started taking Latin to “keep it up” after high school and just wasn't able to let go!
My most rewarding experience at Notre Dame was my senior thesis for the History Honors Program, where I researched the writings of John, Abigail, and John Quincy Adams and wrote over seventy pages on their use of Latin in their letters and diaries. It’s easy to see why so many historians love to study such letters and discuss the ties of affection that held the family together through difficult years. When I was home over Christmas, I brought a volume of the Adams correspondence with me, and I found my mom reading it one day after I’d left in on the kitchen table. This surprised me because she had never shown much interest in either eighteenth-century U.S. history or Latin, yet she remarked, “once you get the hang of [their writing], you really get interested.” I couldn’t have put it better myself, and I’m grateful I had the opportunity to complete the project through the History Department.
Every history and classics professor I had at Notre Dame enriched not just my knowledge of a particular field but my intellectual life as a whole. Best of all they taught me to engage ideas encountered in the classroom with my life outside of it. Currently, I have accepted an offer of admission and full scholarship from the Cardozo School of Law in New York City. While I am not sure what area of the law I will pursue, or where my studies will take me, I know that I will always keep my experiences at Notre Dame in mind and in my heart.
