Joseph Hess majored in English (Writing Emphasis), with a Minor in Latin. A member of the Honors College, he graduated in Fall 2018 with Distinguished Honors. He is currently employed as a public librarian with plans to apply to the Library Science program of Emporia State during the 2019 fall semester.
Joe participated in the Historia Scholastica Project as an Undergraduate from 2017-2018, and continues as a Community Participant working on HSP: Judges. When asked for favourite memories from Latin class, he recalled encountering a notable typo in Comestor’s text during an HSP workday: “and they defeated them in battle by an exchange of women”, when it should have said “defeated them…by an exchange of wounds“. Joe writes, “While the words in Latin are somewhat similar, how that got past the fourteenth century scribes is still a mystery to me.”
Joe anticipates a career in archives and intends to draw upon his experiences with HSP in his application and future jobs. In his own words, “My time in the Latin program taught me many things: what collaboration between academic colleagues could be, the finer points of linguistics and grammar, and the joy that comes from figuring out a puzzle that wasn’t math. I consider myself a scholar not because I went to college, but because of my time in the Latin program, working on the HSP. I also have a firmer grasp on the early history of my Christian faith, due to the study and translation of some early church documents and histories.”