In the hallway next to the main office is a display with pictures of recent Mount Carmel valedictorians and where they each decided to attend college. One of them, Blake Lopez, has always stood out.
Lopez, valedictorian of the class of 2020, attended Harvard University. He is one of the most accomplished students to come out of MC in the school’s recent history and graduated from Harvard in 2024 with a bachelor’s degree in Classics and Classical Languages, Literature, and Linguistics.
Lopez currently attends the University of Oxford in England on a fellowship. This has granted him the ability to pursue his master’s degree as well as a planned Ph.D. in the future.
He grew up in Crown Point, Indiana, and went to St. Mary’s Catholic Community School, and when it came time to look for a high school to attend, he made the decision to go somewhere a little far away from home.
“[Mount Carmel] seemed like a really great place with an emphasis on academics, co-curriculars, sports, and everything,” said Lopez. “It seemed like a really great place to just grow not only as a student but as a person for four years, so I went there and found out I was pretty much right about all that. It was a great four years. I think that it set me up for everything that I’ve been able to do since then.”
Lopez was an extremely involved student during his time at MC, participating in many extracurriculars while here. Along with playing football for two years, Lopez was on the track team where he threw shot put. He was a part of the Scholastic Bowl, Classics Club, Math Team, Mock Trial, Model UN, and was Director of Communications on Student Council.
He also chose some independent studies as a high schooler, such as taking college classes at the University of Chicago and studying ancient Greek after school with MC Latin teacher Dr. Jon Berry. Because of the hard work he put in while here, Lopez was a very appealing applicant for many colleges.
“I was very fortunate,” said Lopez. “I had a lot of great options to pick for college. I did [an] early action application to UChicago so I found out I got in there the earliest. I did a lot of after school stuff at UChicago while in high school. UChicago was actually at the top of my list for quite a while. After I had that option secure I kind of just shot for the moon honestly.”
Lopez sent out applications to many Ivy League schools and was accepted into Yale, Brown, and Harvard. Making the decision for college wasn’t easy, especially considering how the COVID-19 pandemic started up just at the end of his senior year.
“I was really looking forward to my whole senior year being able to go and visit schools to sort of get a lay of the land for where I’d like to go that I had been accepted to,” said Lopez. “Of course, something else happened [in] Spring 2020 that kind of threw a wrench in that. So actually the first time I ever stepped foot on Harvard was move in day.”
Having received a scholarship from UChicago, Lopez was leaning in that direction of attending there at first, but when his financial aid package from Harvard evened it out he decided to go there due to how their Classics Department has a study that rolls the classics and linguistics into one track.
“I’m sure I would have had a great experience at UChicago also, but I am very happy with how things turned out,” said Lopez. “I was lucky enough also to receive fellowship from the Classics Department at Harvard to pursue my masters at Oxford. I’m very happy with how things have turned out since then.”
Going from high school to college is already a transition, but adding the pandemic onto that just made it all the more complicated. By the time the fall semester came around at Harvard, he was doing online classes in the dorms.
“It was a very strange time all around,” said Lopez. “For me it felt like a transition from Carmel into COVID and then from COVID into Harvard. I actually don’t think I got to experience much of a direct Carmel to Harvard transition and I say that because we didn’t even start with in person classes at Harvard until my sophomore year.”
By the time things got back to a semblance of normal at Harvard, it was already Lopez’s junior year.
“I think one of the great things about Harvard is that because there is so much offered you can challenge yourself as much as you desire to,” said Lopez. “There are the regular undergraduate classes offered and you can take as many of those as you want. There are also graduate classes for grad students that are also willing to offer admission to undergrads who are interested. So I took some of those as well.”
Lopez did independent study in some languages and research experiences during the summer with his professors. At Harvard, students take an average of four courses per term. Lopez ended up taking five because there was so much he wanted to learn about.
“I made it a point to challenge myself as much as a could,” said Lopez. “I wanted to avail myself to as many of the opportunities that were available to me. It’s an environment that rewards the people who go out of their ways to do that. You get exactly as much out of it as you put into it. I wouldn’t say at the baseline it’s very hard like every gen ed you take is going to push you to your limit or anything like that. If every single class pushed you to your limit then you would get spread very thin very quickly. One of the things I tried to do was strike a good balance between the specific courses I wanted to challenge myself in while also fulfilling my other requirements and while also pursuing some independent research opportunities as well.”
While at Harvard, Lopez continued to strive for excellence in his extracurricular activities as well. He served as co-president of the Classics Club at MC, and then served as vice president of the Classics Club at Harvard. During his junior and senior year he was also the co-president of the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society.
While serving he brought in a lot of known experts as guest speakers for the Classics Club and did a live rendition of the tragedy Medea by Seneca.
“That was a great deal of fun,” said Lopez. “We sold out all three nights we were on.”
He also garnered special recognition for his undergraduate dissertation.
“I was lucky enough to win the Classics Department Prize for the best thesis on the Latin Language in undergrad. So apparently my work is going on the right track somewhere, so hopefully I can keep it on the right track here.”
At Harvard there are three speeches that students give at the commencement ceremony. Two of them are given by undergraduates of the graduating class, and then the third is given by a graduate student from one of the graduate schools. The graduate and valedictorian speeches are delivered in English, but the salutatorian one is delivered in Latin, and. Lopez had the distinction of being the Latin salutatorian in the class of 2024.
“The opportunity to give the Latin Salutatorian at Commencement was an opportunity which I was aware of after I had been accepted into Harvard,” said Lopez. “It’s something that I had always sort of idly dreamt about having the opportunity to do at some point, but there is so many incredibly talented people at Harvard. I never took for granted for any means that I would be the one delivering it. So the fact that I did end up having the chance to deliver it really was a dream come true.”
Writing the speech was difficult but also rewarding. Lopez was happy to have the assistance of his professors when working on his Latin pronunciation.
“So that was obviously such a fun time for me to write a speech in Latin and be able to deliver it in front of thirty-thousand people (at the) Harvard Yard for commencement,” said Lopez. “So definitely the biggest I’ve ever given. I did start at Carmel, [when] I did speech and debate.”
In the US one doesn’t necessarily need a master’s before attempting a Ph.D. program. However, it is a requirement in Europe, and Lopez wanted to have the choice. He received a fellowship from the Harvard Classics Department for recent graduates obtaining a master’s in Europe after graduation.
“I am having a great time over here and am very happy with this decision,” said Lopez. “[They have] certain ways of studying the classics and studying linguistics that I am familiar with from undergrad at Harvard, [and] certain ways of approaching those disciplines that they have a different way of doing over here so it’s really broadening my horizons. I’m getting the chance to meet a lot of new people whose work I’ve read but have never had the chance to meet in person before. So I’m really having a great time here right now, and I’m really excited to see where it’s going to lead in the future.”
Having just finished up his first term at Oxford, Lopez immersed himself fully into the experience. He put just as much effort as he did at Harvard.
“Ever since moving in and up to the very end of the semester it’s just been a fantastic time,” said Lopez. “Here in the UK they take their study of the classics [and] Latin and Greek very seriously. There’s just so much to do and so much to learn and so many lectures to attend and all those sorts of things.”
From having to pursue extra lessons with Dr. Berry to working towards a masters at Oxford, Lopez really has come a long way.
“It’s a very nice feeling starting at Carmel and needing to sort of make my own opportunities and then finally ending up over here and basically drowning in all the Latin and Greek that I could possibly want,” said Lopez. “The community and all the people on campus here are just absolutely fantastic. If I recall correctly I think most students at Oxford are actually graduate students as opposed to undergraduates and I think most graduate students may be international students like myself.”
Going over for the most part by himself, with only a couple of undergraduate students that he knew from Harvard also being there, the environment was certainly unfamiliar. In fact, knowing only a handful of people and making new friends in an unfamiliar place is similar to the transition from MC to college that Lopez missed out on due to the pandemic.
“In a lot of ways it feels like I’m making up for something that I didn’t exactly get the chance to do when I started undergrad,” said Lopez. “It was a very nice experience coming here and having all these social spaces and everybody super eager to make friends.”
Meeting new people and making connections is something Lopez remembers having to do at MC.
“In a lot of ways I have to say it’s rather similar to the experience I had going to Carmel for the first time actually,” said Lopez. “I’m an Indiana guy, I didn’t know anybody at all actually starting at Carmel so it’s not the first time I’ve had to build a whole new group of friends and connections with people completely from scratch. That’s one of the very underrated things about my time at Carmel actually that I think has paid off very well throughout my life. Similar thing at Harvard, [and] definitely similar experience here at Oxford.”
From MC to Harvard and then to Oxford in the UK, Lopez has truly had an incredible journey and there is so much left in store for him. In the future, his dream is to end up as a professor of Latin.
“Totus mundus exspectatione maxima uidet quid hinc faciamus; gaudeamus igitur. Auete atque ualete!” said Lopez in his salutatorian speech. Translation: “The whole world is watching with the greatest anticipation what we do from here, so let’s celebrate. Goodbye, and farewell!”
