Reddit mentions of From Alpha to Omega: A Beginning Course in Classical Greek

Glad to hear about another potential future classicist! Former Classics major here (BA). First thing in a Classics degree is to pick your major language, either Latin or Greek. I did three years of Latin; two of Greek. Different schools will have different requirements.

Depending on your background (from secondary school), you'll either start in an intro course or in perhaps a mid-level or intermediate course. Expect the intro course to walk you through a standard textbook to Latin/Greek (such as Wheelock or Alpha to Omega). Expect a decent amount of homework involving memorization and the translation of basic sentences.

As you progress into higher level language courses, courseload can differ dependent upon the difficulty of the school you're in. At my undergrad institution (a smaller but reputable college in New Jersey), at the intermediate level of each language I translated about 30 lines of the language from class to class; at the advanced level, about 50-60 lines. That can vary wildly depending on what you're translating, and with whom. If you're in a class of fellow geniuses, things will go quicker.

Finally, in your senior year, expect to take a senior seminar in which you'll probably have to write a major paper, or thesis, of a great length on a major classical topic. This is the culmination of everything, and can be a lot of fun.

Of course, along the way, expect to take a bunch of mythology, ancient history, and all the random requirements that random colleges tend to mandate.

I highly recommend the field of Classics. It's a wonderful, tight-knit community of a higher intellectual standard than many other fields. Of course, jobs are a bit tight, but that's a whole separate discussion!

To learn Latin, I always suggest Wheelock--I think the fourth edition was new when I studied Latin, so I can't swear by the 7th edition, but it probably hasn't changed too much. Others frequently advocate for LLPSI because it's closer to immersion (the way most modern languages are taught) than grammar-first (Wheelock's and my preferred method). Obviously you'd need more than just the first volume of LLPSI, but that's where you'd start.

As for Latin resources, the Latin Library has a ton of free texts, including the Latin Fathers. At least some of them are OCR scans, though, so be aware that there may be typos here and there.

For Ancient Greek... I learned with Groton, which tries to be the Wheelock of Greek, but doesn't do as well. Every time someone asks this on r/AncientGreek, there's never a consensus on the best textbook.

Once you understand how the language works, you can start reading texts without translation, as long as you have a dictionary handy. My recommendation is that you always try to figure out each word yourself before turning to other resources, but if you get really stuck, you can use parsers (Whitaker's Words for just Latin, Perseus has parsers for both). Perseus also has a lot of texts available, both original language and public domain translations, and the code for their database is open-source. Even if you don't use their parsers, Perseus has Liddell & Scott (the Liddell-Scott-Jones "Great Scott"/"LSJ" and the "Middle Liddell" sizes), Slater, and Autenrieth dictionaries for Greek and the Lewis & Short (as well as its abbreviated Elementary Lewis) dictionary for Latin.

If you're flush with cash, the Loeb Classical Library has, I would like to say, almost everything in Greek and Latin side-by-side with translations. It's an easy way to read and study the classics without first learning the languages (or while you learn the languages). If you have access to an academic library, you can usually find/access them without having to buy them. Now that I work far from academia, I just have to lament sadly that I can't afford it. (Before I get too old, maybe I'll buy an individual license for the digital version.)

As for Church Fathers in general, like I mentioned above, many Latin Fathers are available for free, and most (not quite all, I don't think) Church Fathers are available for free in translation. The Greek texts are harder to come by, mostly because they aren't collected in one quick place that I'm aware of (except perhaps sites like Perseus).

Trying to find free resources can be a challenge because university presses are behind most publications of classical texts, which means (1) they get to copyright the texts because of their translation, critical apparatus, or editing, and (2) those copyrights last a long time when assigned to an institution instead of a person, especially when they keep refreshing them with new "editions" that barely change.