‘Returning to school as an older adult is something I highly recommend to everyone.’

Nancy Coffey, Locust Valley

“I was never a good student in foreign languages — art, science and music were my favorite subjects. But in 2006 at the age of 51 and after 28 years as a portrait painter, I decided to go back to study at Hunter College, part of CUNY, with art history as my major and classics as a minor. And for my first classics course, mythology, I was required to take an intensive Latin course and … it certainly was intensive! After gaining reasonable success in the basics, I moved on to Ovid, Virgil, Catullus and Cicero — all in Latin!

While my fellowship is designed to lead to graduation with a PhD in 2028, I expect to continue to take courses that pique my interest well into the future.

“During the summer of 2009, I began studying ancient Greek. Plato, Xenophon and the ancient tragedians were becoming accessible in their original form. It was quite something for someone who wasn’t good at foreign languages! On a roll now, I applied for and was accepted into the MA [master of arts] program in classics, after which its chairwoman suggested that I would be a good candidate for the PhD program. A doctorate by my 73rd birthday? Yes! I have just finished the first year of a five-year fellowship and am preparing for the required translation exams in both ancient Greek and Latin before moving on to the dissertation process.

“This past spring, I took the very challenging ancient Greek rhetoric and stylistics, which is designed to study the various prose writers’ styles with the goal to produce my own compositions in that style. The final assignment was to write a philosophical argument on love in the style of one of the ancient Greek philosophers. I chose Aristotle. Composing in a foreign language is definitely more challenging than translating it into English, but one’s understanding of the grammar and syntax is certainly reinforced.

“Returning to school as an older adult is something I highly recommend to everyone. Not only does it keep your mind supple with learning new subjects, but it also gives you the opportunity to take those courses you missed the first time around or wished you had been able to pursue further. And in the CUNY system, it’s also quite affordable!

“While my fellowship is designed to lead to graduation with a PhD in 2028, I expect to continue to take courses that pique my interest well into the future. As we say in Latin, ‘Per sapientiam ad astra!’ (‘To the stars through wisdom!’)”

Interviewed by Saul Schachter