Michelle Plouse is a new Classical Studies student at UC Santa Cruz. She grew up in Cupertino, and attended Monte Vista High School for two years and then finished at De Anza Middle College, from which she graduated in 2013. She likes history, and is especially interested in the neolithic, ancient, and medieval periods. She also loves the outdoors. She says enjoys “being outside in the trees, going on hikes, playing frisbee, running around in rivers, stuff like that.” She also likes to travel. Michelle visited South Africa and England as a child, and Singapore and India in the summer of 2013.
Michelle says, “I started reading about ancient Greece and Rome in the third grade and it just kept getting more interesting. I obsessively read books and watched documentaries for my whole childhood. Then when I was a freshman in high school I read Herodotus and Thucydides and decided I had to learn Greek. So I spent the rest of high school studying classics on my own, waiting to get to a place with a Classical Studies program." When noting reason why she chose to come study at UC Santa Cruz, Michelle said, "everyone I asked raved about the Classical Studies program and how close knit and full of awesome professors it was. I think I was really lucky to find a program where everyone is so passionate and really enjoys studying classics as much as I do. It's a really fun and special group to be a part of.”
