2022 History and French Hello! I’m Olivia, a History and French student. I am extremely excited to travel around the USA for the first time - it’s a country I have always been fascinated by and paid close attention to. I have always had the goal of visiting all 50 states, and I hope to at least make a dent! I look forward to meeting members of the Balliol alumni community along the way. My time at Balliol has been the most rewarding of my life. I have been given so many opportunities to broaden my horizons, academically, of course, but in other ways too. Being on the JCR committee in first and second year helped me feel like I really was taking part in the functioning of the college, and I became very connected to it and my peers. My year abroad in Paris, where I studied History at the Sorbonne, was similarly a fascinating and enriching experience which I was afforded thanks to the exchange programme with Oxford. Coming back from my year abroad, I took on my role as Dervorguilla (History) Society president and have continued to try to give back to the college which has given me so much! My pathfinders project was inspired by reading Simone de Beauvoir’s 1947 ‘Amérique au jour le jour’, a book that is part travel diary, part philosophical musings on de Beauvoir’s travels through the US after the end of WW2, particularly commenting on the cultural differences she encounters. I would love to witness and learn about trends in the nature of American consumption and identity in a similar way, and see how they’ve changed since the post-war era.