Olivia Hay OC ‘17

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Lady Doak College, India (2017-19)

Olivia Hay graduated in May 2017 as an Anthropology major with a linguistics concentration. Olivia is particularly interested in languages. She was a research assistant in Oberlin’s Linguistics Lab, and in 2016 presented research on Hiaki (an endangered Native American language) at the Symposium on American Indian Languages at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She has studied Japanese since middle school, has taken an intensive Mandarin course, and traveled to five different cities in Japan on a LIASE grant to learn about energy and sustainability practices. Olivia thrived for four years as a varsity NCAA athlete and was Senior Captain of the Oberlin Women’s Tennis team. In addition, she was selected for the Oberlin Law Scholars Program for 2015-2016 and sees herself in law school in the future.

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A Town Called Madurai
A Town Called Madurai

Olivia Hay ‘17, Lady Doak Fellow

One time I jumped in a taxi at the airport, only for the driver to remember me from a previous ride from the airport about a month prior. I was reminded then that despite being a city of 1.6 million, Madurai really was the small town that everyone believed it was.

Something to Write Home About
Something to Write Home About

Olivia Hay ‘17, Lady Doak Fellow

The first time I saw an elephant was at Alagarkoil, a temple in the hills of Madurai dedicated to Vishnu. I stopped in my tracks to marvel at the size of the thing and wonder whose job it was to decorate the elephant’s face with painted symbols.

My friend encouraged me to give it an offering in exchange for a blessing. Eagerly I placed a five rupee coin in its trunk, only to get smacked across the face a few seconds later by the same limb.

“…did the elephant just slap you in the face?”

“You’re supposed to bow your head after you give the donation…” my friend laughed.