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College Year in Athens Senior Year

Justin Dooley Start Date: Mar 18, 2025 - End Date: Aug 29, 2025
  • Athens, Greece
  • Delphi, Greece
  • Archaia Olympia, Greece

My Travel Story

by: Justin Dooley Start Date: Mar 18, 2025 - End Date: Aug 29, 2025
The program for which I am applying is the College Year in Athens (CYA) Academic Year 2025-2026 program, which will take place in Athens, Greece, and will run from 1st of September 2025 through the 17th of May 2026. CYA takes students from around the world and congregates them in one of the cultural capitals of the ancient world, teaching both general education and classics-focused courses. This is supplemented by many trips both in the city itself and beyond, to the Greek countryside, to better study the archaeological remains which so many students see in photographs, but rarely in person.

 

The reasons for my wanting to attend this program are manifold. The first would be that, with my having lived abroad before, I wish to try to replicate this experience and create new memories in a culture so different from our own. The second, as a student and prospective scholar, I value any opportunity to participate in a global community of likeminded and culturally varied scholars from around the world. To do so in the birthplace of so many arts and philosophies while also honing our collective skills in deciphering obscured beliefs and cultural practices is an experience that would provide varied perspectives at which, on my own, I would not arrive. The third, and perhaps most important to my future in the field of Classics, is that the language classes offered by this program greatly supplement the requirements of ancient and modern research languages suggested by most graduate programs. With these new and honed skills, I will be able to delve deeper into untranslated scholarship and not be forced to rely upon translations that sometimes miss the desired impact of the original author.

 

I began my undergraduate studies pursuing archaeology, but in more recent years I have steadily developed an appreciation for the myths exchanged between people, and how these stories influenced the Greek worldview. Of late, my focus has been Bronze Age and Archaic Greek religion, specifically relating to the chthonic gods. In the future, I would like to expand my studies beyond these periods to Hellenistic, Roman, or even late antique paganism. During my stay in Athens, I hope to continue my studies of ancient religion and to better furnish my understanding of how an individual in ancient Athens would have interacted with the cityscape in a religious context. I plan to continue studying Greek and Latin to further cement these skills as I prepare to apply for graduate school, but the area in which I hope to grow the most with the College Year Athens program is my understanding of modern Greek language and culture. As an added benefit, we will also be fostering a sense of community amongst the next generation of scholars and the culture that has fascinated me since childhood. Such a bond can only come about through close cultural contact for a prolonged period of time, which is exactly what this program provides.
  • Athens, Greece
  • Delphi, Greece
  • Archaia Olympia, Greece

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