Olivier Jamois

Linguistics Major

Olivier grew up in a bilingual French-speaking household in San Marcos, California. In his free time, he likes to rock climb, play tabletop games and surf Wikipedia. He is currently learning Japanese.

Why UC San Diego
Close enough to his home in San Marcos for Olivier to visit his family, UC San Diego was the best school he got into, particularly for his original major: Computer Science. 
 
Why Linguistics
After a year of being a Computer Science major, he did not find the courses to be particularly enjoyable, and began to question what he was passionate about: dawning upon his life-long love of language. Olivier grew up speaking French with his family and took many Spanish courses in high school. He watched videos about linguistics and read a Latin textbook, leading him to discover that what really fascinated him about languages was not learning the language itself, but analyzing aspects of it. He started taking Linguistics classes as a Computer Science major, was instantly welcomed by the faculty and students, and decided to switch his major. Since, he has become the president of the Linguistics Undergraduate Association and has especially enjoyed the opportunity to take a graduate course in Semantics as a second-year undergraduate student. Being immersed in a classroom of graduate students, Olivier says he saw people pursuing a life and career centered on linguistics and felt super inspired. 
 
Plans after graduation
Olivier plans to take a gap year after graduation to teach English to students in Japan, and then he plans apply to graduate schools. Drawing from his experience as a teaching assistant for Linguistics 101, he says his long-term goal is to pursue academia in Linguistics, which would involve obtaining a Ph.D. in the subject.