In what ways does living in Minnesota differ from living in Indiana?
Adams- “Well, I greatly appreciate the lack of snow here and warmer weather in winter months. It is very different that I don’t get to spend more time at the lake in the summer. That’s probably the thing that I miss because I do enjoy heading up to Lake Michigan. It’s much more accessible in Minnesota.”
What was your first job, and what did you learn from it?
Adams-“I worked at a movie theater in high school, and I learned a lot about people and consumer habits. I also learned how ironic people could be. On Christmas Day, people would be like, ‘Isn’t it terrible that you have to work on Christmas?,” but they had no realization that they were the reason it’s one of the busiest days of the year.”
What extracurricular activities did you participate in during high school, and did you carry any of them to college?
Adams-“I competed in speech, swimming, tack and band. I only continued doing marching band in college.”
Did you see yourself going to Notre Dame while in high school?
Adams-“It’s been my dream since childhood to go to Notre Dame. Both my parents attended, and I have a lot of family in South Bend. So that’d been one of the goals that I had since middle school. I started planning things and making sure that I was in the right classes to be able to take AP Calculus as a senior in high school. Looking back, it was kind of crazy that that was a decision factor for me, but that had been my goal for my whole life.”
What was your favorite class in college?
Adams-“I enjoyed a lot of my classes. I would say one of the best was a Lithics class which was essentially like old, Paleolithic, Neolithic-era stone and toolmaking. I still have arrowheads and other things that I made in that class. It was my senior year, but it counted for my anthropology major.”
What is the most valuable lesson you learned while in college?
Adams-“You learn a ton in college: you have to function more independently and do things for yourself. I feel like I learned a lot about advocating for myself. I learned how to study; I didn’t have good study habits prior to college. I learned how important it is to be passionate about what you do. It wasn’t enough to be able to do things easily. You had to care about what you were putting energy into, but also, that passion is returned to you because you get to meet a lot of people that either feel the same or feel opposite to you.”
What advice do you have for seniors as they await college decisions?
Adams-“It is out of your hands, so try not to stress too much. I will say that, with the more selective schools, you have done everything that you can do, and it is up to the college making decisions based on what demographics they want represented in their freshman class. It is not necessarily that if you don’t make it that you aren’t qualified.”
Why learn Latin and not another language?
Adams-“Latin is unique. It always starts a conversation with people. What people like to say against Latin is that you can’t have conversations with real life people that currently still speak the language. I took Spanish for about eight years from middle school through my first year of college, and I was terrified of having conversations with people in Spanish. I spoke it well enough with my classmates, but speaking to real people was still not an option for me. I’ve felt really passionate about Latin since childhood. I read the Percy Jackson series, and I was always really into mythology.”
How can Latin be useful to learn for everyday people?
Adams-“Latin has taught me more about the English language than my English classes did. With Latin, you learn a lot of your root words, and I think more about the way the language works.”
What is your favorite classic literary work?
Adams-“I like different ones for different reasons. I would say that the Iliad is one of my favorites. It was the first one that I read in college, and it was what got me into the classics major as a whole. Part of what I like about classics is that you can look back at things that happened thousands of years ago and see the similarities but also see the differences in how people have changed and stayed the same. The Iliad is a beautiful story that shows a huge depth of emotion and how the Ancient Greeks thought that the world worked. It also has huge ramifications even in the world today because it’s so relevant in literature and in people’s lives.
Why do you have such an interest in Latin/classics?
Adams-“I can remember being really young, and I was really into Egyptian mythology at first. I can’t say why I started, but I was just really interested in those stories. When the fifth Percy Jackson book was coming out, my sister had read the whole series and had told me to wait for the fifth book to come out, so I could read all of them in order. I binge read those five books in a very short period of time. I would say Latin specifically was more interesting because it seemed to be more accessible; there are more Latin classes in the world and in college.”
Who is your favorite Percy Jackson character?
Adams-“I’ve been reading The Trials of Apollo series, and I feel like Will Solace and Nico di Angelo are the major characters that have been focused on. Of course, Annabeth is also a girl boss. She is everything.”
What’s your favorite place on Cathedral’s campus?
Adams-“I’m a sucker for a library. I also really love doing the nature walk path down by the ravine, but I just love being around books. I love reading, and you can never go wrong with a good library.”
How has teaching at Cathedral helped develop you as a person?
Adams-“It’s definitely been my most independent stage of my life. This has been my first major job and my first time living on my own. Cathedral itself has been a really great help because there’s really great staff, a lovely student body and plenty of people to make my job lots of fun. Young adulthood is a very transitional time, and Cathedral has been very helpful in being a good, healthy place for roots to grow.”
If you had an unlimited budget, what’s one thing you would want to be built on Cathedral’s campus?
Adams-“A swimming pool. I swam from when I was six years old until my senior year of high school. I would love to be able to do some laps at any point in time. I don’t have a pool accessible to me, so that’s one thing I want in my life. Otherwise, an ice rink.”
If you could teach a class on any topic in the world, what would it be?
Adams-“I would really like to teach an archaeology class. If I could teach anything though, I don’t know how, but I’d love to teach like trivia. I really love geography trivia. I don’t want to teach actual geography. I want to teach fun facts: How do you memorize the locations of every country in the world? What are the fun tips and tricks, like knowing that Baltic states go (from north to south) Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania? That type of thing is so niche, so unnecessary in anybody’s life, but I really enjoy it.”
What’s your favorite country you’ve been to?
Adams-“I do love Italy. I spent five weeks there when I was studying abroad and got sent home early due to COVID. It’s really amazing to have spent a significant period of time studying places, artwork and literature from a specific place and then actually getting to go and see those places. The fact that classics have been valued for so long and people have preserved them, it is truly amazing to be able to go there.”
Do you have any unusual talents?
Adams-“I would say geography. It’s not related to anything that I do in my work, but I can name and place every country in the world on a map.”
What is the most recent thing you crocheted?
Adams-“I made one of those shrugs. I don’t know how to describe it. It was super easy, and it took only two days. I wore it out recently and a girl asked me if I could make one for her or if I sold them, and I was like, ‘no,’ but now I’m considering that that might be my side hustle.”
What is your dream concert?
Adams-“This is tough. I like a lot of music. I think it would be the Fleet Foxes playing their first two albums entirely. Otherwise, maybe alt-J opening for Glass Animals.”
