Riley and the Prose Caesar Made Difficult

Riley holds a Magna Cum Laude distinction in the SCRIBO Latin Writing Contest, and, at the time she earned it, was the youngest student on record to receive one.

That result sits inside a four-year arc that began with no prior acquaintance with Latin at all, when she came to Emerson Latin as an elementary school student. In 2023, her first year, she earned Maxima Cum Laude across four separate examinations: the National Latin Exam, the National Latin Vocabulary Exam, the National Mythology Exam, and the National Classical Etymology Exam. The following year brought Summa Cum Laude in three of the same four. She has since taken Magna Cum Laude on the National Latin Exam in both 2025 and 2026, and Maxima Cum Laude on this year's National Latin Vocabulary Exam. She was inducted, this year as well, into the National Latin Honor Society.

Caesar's prose resisted her at first, a distinctive, difficult style she worked through not by waiting for it to click, but by asking persistent questions and revising outside of class until literal translation stopped being a struggle.

Her record beyond Latin is no less crowded. She placed as Outstanding Delegate, runner-up, at the 2025 Yonsei Model United Nations Conference, made the Honors List in the 2026 Immerse Education Essay Competition, and was crowned champion at the 2026 Korean World Schools Debating Championships. A student at Chadwick International in Songdo, Incheon, she pursues mathematics outside of formal study, and her parents and teachers describe her simply as optimistic and diligent.

She has been admitted to Phillips Andover Academy for the coming year. What Latin actually changed, she says, is the lens itself: a more analytical way of approaching language and culture, and a sharper eye for the historical roots beneath languages she already knew. Latin, in her own words, is not a dead language but the most alive one there is, the origin and foundation of a great many modern languages, and to learn it is to be handed the key to all of them. "Emerson Latin," she says, "is the perfect environment for students wishing to cultivate their knowledge and understanding in classics."