We’ll start with the tweet (thanks Sylvia!):

https://twitter.com/#!/ClassicBookworm/status/94228196970606592

… and then we might as well include the incipit of the post from the Gmailblog to have it on record in case it moves:

In this month’s Faces of Gmail we’re profiling Sarah Price, our history-loving, lindy-hopping community manager.

What do you do on the Gmail team?
I’m the Community Manager for Gmail. That means that I watch over Gmail’s user forum and talk with Gmail users in other places. For example, I’m one of the people behind @gmail on Twitter and Facebook. If you use Google+, you can follow me there, too!

What’s the most challenging part of your job?
Gmail users have high expectations for us. They think of Gmail as their own and have great ideas about how to make it better. I love this about our users. Sometimes, though, we make a change that some people love and some people don’t like as much. For the people who don’t like the change, it can be hard to help them understand why we made it, and that we are still listening to their feedback.

What’s your favorite part of your job?
I love that I get to work with such an amazing product, and I love meeting Gmail users from all over the world, including the “Top Contributors” in our Help Forum. I also love helping people get to know each other. It’s very powerful when people come together over a common interest in Gmail.

What did you do before coming to Google?
I studied Latin Literature at Yale and Ancient History at Oxford. You are probably wondering how I ended up at Google! While I was a student, I also worked as a computer repair technician. I enjoy solving problems and teaching people about technology.

[…]

… just noticed the photo of Sarah has her clutching a Loeb … a few other Classics-looking tomes in front of her as well.

UPDATE (a few hours later): I asked Sarah on google+ about the Loeb and she  said it was Suetonius; there’s also a copy of  Ursula LeGuin’s Lavinia in the stack, and assorted others …

Just came across this while looking for something for my kid … Colby Devitt (Classics Major!) talks about how Helene Foley talked her into going after a grant to direct a drama in Greek and all that was involved:

… this has ‘What to do with a Classics degree’ potential too …

From Charlotte Higgins, inter alia:

Asked about connections between his education and his current role, he replied: “MI5 needs people with good intellectual skills, the ability to spot connections, the ability to absorb and assess a variety of material. Natural ground for a classicist.” He added: “There has been something of a classical tradition in the intelligence world. The retired officer who first interviewed me for a job in MI5 was a classicist.” Evans also revealed he once even received a note from his boss written “in perfect ancient Greek”. I do believe the makers of Spooks are missing a trick here: I long to see Lucas and Harry communicate by way of perfectly formed Greek hendecasyllables.

• via A classicist at MI5 | Culture | The Guardian.

One of the potential ‘career areas’ I don’t think we stress enough in the Classics world is conservation, so here’s a piece from UD Daily wherein a student describes her experiences:

This summer I am working in the conservation lab at the archaeological site of Poggio Colla in the Mugello Valley of Tuscany, Italy. Poggio Colla has been annually excavated for the past 17 seasons by Southern Methodist University, Franklin and Marshall College and the University of Pennsylvania Museum.

The site is an active field school where students learn the techniques of archaeological excavation. Additionally, conservation activities, illustration, zooarchaeology, cataloguing and research are carried out at two lab facilities.

Poggio Colla is an Etruscan settlement site with habitation dating from the 7th century to the 2nd century BCE. It is also believed that the site may have functioned as a sanctuary for ritual purposes during the later period.

As an intern in the conservation lab, I work with one other graduate intern, Nicole Ledoux, from the UCLA/Getty Conservation Program, and supervising conservators Ariel O’Connor and Allison Lewis. In the lab, we examine and document the finds before cleaning and stabilizing them so that they can be safely handled and studied by archaeologists and students. We have also been working on rehousing some of the important bronze finds from past seasons.

This season, five new trenches have been opened and the finds so far are predominantly ceramics, bronze, iron and bone. I am working on cleaning and excavating the interior of a large impasto holmos, a large ceramic base for a vessel. After cleaning is completed, I will be stabilizing cracks and joining fragments to reconstruct the remaining portions.

Since the site is an active field school, we have given tours of the lab to current students and taught them about the field of conservation and the differences between archaeological site work and museum work. We gave a conservation workshop on methods of ceramic reconstruction where they learned to reassemble broken ceramics using facsimile terracotta pots and conservation adhesives.

It has been a wonderful experience to work hands-on with such a variety of archaeological materials and to collaborate with specialists from many fields. I have enjoyed sharing our work in the conservation lab with other students and staff. Additionally, working in Italy has given me the opportunity to travel to museums and archaeological sites to compare conservation methods with those I have been studying at the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation.

• Erin A. Anderson: Poggio Colla, Mugello Valley of Tuscany | UD Daily

The incipit and a bit of an item in the Guardian:

As experts warn the ongoing cuts in the public sector could result in record levels of graduate unemployment; despondent graduate jobseekers may find comfort in the words of Friedrich Nietzsche: “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Of course, Nietzsche was a great philosopher, but not many people know he originally studied classics; it was only after a book he authored on the subject was rubbished by a rival that he switched disciplines.

For today’s classics graduates, Nietzsche’s famous quote may be particularly relevant. Six months after leaving university, only 51.6% of 2008 classics graduates were in employment compared with 61.5% of graduates in other subjects. However, the subject is held in high regard by employers, and graduates in the subject often acknowledge its indirect importance; as London mayor (and classics graduate) Boris Johnson, has said: “I’m hugely grateful to my degree. The mere possession has been of no assistance at all – what’s invaluable has been the philosophy.”

So if you do initially struggle to find a niche, you should at least, like Johnson, be able to remain philosophical about life’s hardships.

What skills have you gained?

Studying classics will highlight your ability to learn and comprehend challenging subjects. You will also develop your ability to research, collate and analyse materials and learn to critically evaluate resources in order to formulate arguments, which you can present competently. You will be able to work alone or within a team and to think imaginatively, a talent Harry Potter creator and classics graduate JK Rowling (pictured) has in abundance. Perhaps she also found studying different societies, cultures and civilisations helped her create a completely new fictitious one. Classics graduates therefore enter the jobs market with specific, practical, intellectual and theoretical skills.

What jobs can you do?

“Careers can vary from those that use historical knowledge, in roles such as museum education or exhibitions officer or archivist, historic buildings inspector or conservation officer to those that use the classics graduate’s understanding of language in roles within advertising, editorial work or public relations,” says Margaret Holbrough, a careers adviser at Graduate Prospects.

About 11% of classics graduates entering full-time work found professional roles as private and public-sector managers, while almost 15% entered retail, catering and bar work. Other clerical occupations accounted for the most number of classics graduates (22.2%) who entered employment, possibly a reflection that administrative roles tend to be the entry-level route for graduates wanting to work in creative, cultural and heritage-related positions. Teaching is an option – there is currently a shortage of classics teachers in the UK. As a classics graduate, you are attractive to recruiters from all sectors, including law, finance and consultancy.

[…]

• What to do with a degree in classics | Guardian

The article goes on to mention ‘graduate’ opportunities. Not sure the exempla provided are useful or encouraging. I have created a delicious link (which I update as I find examples) to a pile of bios etc of famous folks who had/have Classics degrees which are probably more encouraging than the somewhat ‘sketchy’ connection of JK Rowling, but the variety of fields folks end up in after taking a Classics degree is incredibly interesting. We have, e.g., recently mentioned the anonymous ‘Hedge Fund Manager’ … not long before that, the Psychology Today blog was also listing a pile of things available for those with Classics training.  A followup piece in the same source had some useful advice on how to sell yourself as a Classicist in a non-Classical job market. One of the great things about the existence of the web is that it does allow you to find plenty of examples of folks who have ‘survived’ getting a Classics degree, should you have to convince your parents …