A Latin Major Joins the Marines

If you find the liberal arts interesting but fear that they are impractical, you may be interested in the experiences of Todd Henserksy. Henserksy is a UWM Latin major who joined the Marine Corps while still a few credits short of graduation. (He will graduate this December upon completion of a course in Latin Composition.) One thing that distracts him from this assignment is that he is currently being given intensive training in Russian by the Marines in Monterey, California, and his career prospects could not be brighter. Though interested in Russian, Henserksi did not study it in college. As he tells it, he owes his success in the Marines to his study of Latin and Greek.

"The exam which actually qualified me for the Linguist Specialty," he writes, "is the Defense Language Aptitude Battery. This test consists of several sections all designed to determine one's ability to learn a language at an accelerated rate. A major portion of the test is based on a 'new' language along with a small vocabulary list. After each set of rules is given, you are required to answer questions based on translating the sentences you hear in this invented language. Each new set of grammar rules is added into the previous ones so that by the end you must utilize all the rules at once. Latin and Greek training makes this portion of the test much easier because the grammar presented is based on inflectional endings.

"No one was able to tell me for sure what the maximum score is. At the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, all languages taught are broken into four categories with 1 being the easiest and 4 being the hardest. To study a category 1 language, one must score at least an 85, category 2 a 90, category 3 a 95, and category 4 a 100. My score was 123. That meant that I was able to pick any language and I chose Russian."

"Linguists trained by the Marines have many opportunities once they leave the Corps. Work with the government is a definite possibility, whether it be with the FBI, CIA or the State Department. There are also jobs working in customs, translating for businesses here and oversees, and so on.

"All the branches of the service offer the Montgomery G.I. Bill. For the first year of your enlistment the military takes out $100 from every pay check. This allows you to be eligible for $15,000 when you have completed your enlistment to be used towards any further undergraduate or graduate work schooling. Other benefits are the usual (i.e. full medical insurance, etc.) and if you like to travel, you will certainly get the chance."