For Charlotte Cardarella, a visit to the Scholastic book fair in first grade turned out to be a career-defining moment.

Among the picture books and novelty erasers, she found a book on mummification in ancient Egypt—one with clear overlays on each page depicting the stages of the ritual and touching on everything from canopic jars to hieroglyphs. She was instantly fascinated.

“Something about it was so interesting to me, and I was hooked,” Cardarella said. “After taking that book home, I remember looking for another book on how to read hieroglyphs. I worked on teaching myself hieroglyphs for years. The more I read, the more I wanted to know.”

By the time she was in high school, Cardarella thought she would leave her interest in Egyptology behind. She had also developed passions for math and science and decided to pursue what she thought would be a more practical major in college: mechanical engineering. But after being accepted to numerous engineering programs, she had an epiphany.

“I realized, ‘I don’t want to do this. I’m doing it for the wrong reasons,’” she said. “My grandfather was an engineer, and I was planning to do it for my family’s sake. But my family assured me they would be happier if I was doing something that made me happy.”

Cardarella, who is from Temecula, California, spent her first year at Holy Cross College reevaluating her career path. While she was there, she joined the Notre Dame Marching Band and soon fell in love with the campus and the community. She transferred to Notre Dame as a sophomore and decided to major in Arabic and anthropology, with the ultimate goal of studying ancient Egypt.

“I had never been to the Midwest before visiting campus with my dad during my senior year of high school, but this place has become a second home to me,” she said. “Coming to Notre Dame was the best decision I could have made.”

Cardarella focuses on archaeology in her anthropology major and has had the chance to participate in two digs at Collier Lodge on the banks of the Kankakee River in Indiana.

That hands-on experience will be invaluable next year as she begins a graduate program in Egyptology at the University of Chicago.

“It’s incredible to be able to do this level of research as an undergrad,” she said. “It’s pretty common for archaeology students to go to graduate school never having done a dig, and I feel so lucky that I’ve gotten to do it twice here.”

On campus, Cardarella works in an archaeology lab, studying Jordanian pottery from Bâb edh-Dhrâ, the site of an Early Bronze Age cemetery near the Dead Sea. She also works as a research assistant in the Center for Environmental Science and Technology, where she just finished a senior thesis under the guidance of Professor Mark Schurr. For that project, she used stable isotope analysis to reconstruct the climate of the Kankakee Valley based on Native American artifacts and shells she found while working at the dig.

“I think when people think of archaeology, they either think of Indiana Jones, or they think you’re just digging and doing paperwork,” she said. “And, to be fair, that’s part of it. But there’s so much more to it than that. We get to use these really cool, STEM-based methodologies all the time in the lab. I still love math and science, and I love that I can do that as part of my anthropology major.”

Cardarella, who plays four musical instruments, found her closest friends and her community in various Notre Dame bands and orchestras. In addition to playing the falto (a.k.a. the mellophone) in the Notre Dame Marching Band for four years, she plays the French horn in the Notre Dame Symphony Orchestra and the horn choir, plays the steel drums—and even learned the bagpipe to be part of the Notre Dame Bagpipe Band.

“The Bagpipe Band was complete happenstance—I was at the Activities Fair in the stadium, looking at all the different clubs, and I saw their table,” she said. “I don’t think I’d ever seen a bagpipe in person before, but the person at the table looked at me and asked, ‘You want to play pipes?’ I told him I didn’t know how, and he said, ‘That’s fine—we’ll teach you.’ That’s all it took, and I’ve been playing for four years now.”

As part of the marching band, Cardarella had the chance to travel to Dublin in the fall of her junior year for the Shamrock Series game. She loved the experience and ended up studying abroad there for the spring semester.

“It was really great to be able to live in another country, especially because I was not well versed in Irish culture,” Cardarella said. “I lived in a flat with another marching band member, and I made so many new friends. We got to explore so much of the country, and I even took an Irish language course. It was just an incredible experience.”

Looking back at her time at Notre Dame, Cardarella said she will miss gamedays with the band the most.

“It’s a stereotypical answer, but my favorite times were always gamedays—the sense of community and the love that everyone has for this University really shines through on those days,” she said. “You’re walking by in your uniform, and someone says, ‘Go Irish! Go band!’ And there are alums who graduated 30 years ago, but they still come back for the games.

“My dad didn’t go to Notre Dame, but he’s now the biggest fan of Notre Dame football I’ve ever met. And it’s because I go here and because of everything I’ve gotten to experience here. The love that people feel for Notre Dame is infectious, and it’s only amplified by the beautiful architecture, the incredible research opportunities, and the amazing professors. I’m sad to leave, but I’ll always be grateful for my time here.”