Name: Olivia Pexton
Hometown: Portsmouth, N.H.
Major: Creative Writing
Minor: Gender and Women’s Studies
Year: Senior
Her Campus Position: Senior Editor
Favorite Food: “Potatoes. Wait, that’s a vegetable. I need a more specific food. Twice baked potatoes.” Olivia Pexton has a funny way of being quietly confident. I say “funny” because at first, she strikes you as a gentle creature. Her voice is quiet and even, and she’s more comfortable laughing at other people’s spectacles rather than creating her own. However, once you get to know her, you’ll quickly learn that her quietness doesn’t come from a place of shyness, but a place of self-confidence. She believes in what she knows unwaveringly, from her opinion on television characters to the President of the United States. You can either get behind that or get out. Case and point, her beliefs on giraffes and horses.
Ashley (Me): Why are giraffes such cool animals? If they had short necks, would they still be cool, or would they just be horses?
Olivia: I hate that question. I think they would be more than horses because I f***ing hate horses. I will fight horses, every one of them, personally. So, no they wouldn’t just be horses because, f*** horses. That’s all the reasoning I need. There’s no reason why giraffes are cool, they just are. They’re just majestic.
(The second thing you may notice is that Olivia swears a lot.)
Olivia was born and raised in Portsmouth, N.H., but decided to leave the state for college to pursue her dreams in pizza delivery. After conducting a bit of research, Olivia learned Oswego was both a hotspot for pizza places and in dire need of delivery drivers, due to the high demand of orders and low number of people willing to drive in lake effect snow. It’s what they call in the pizza business a “perfect storm.”
So, alas, Olivia enrolled in SUNY Oswego to fulfill her parents wishes of pursuing an education while she looked to live out her real dreams of pizza delivery. Unfortunately, she quickly discovered that lake effect snow was not something to mess with and, like so many brave souls before her, could not manage to live the dream of pizza delivery. It’s what they call in the pizza business “a tragedy.”
To dull her pain of being unable to accomplish the pizza dream, Olivia threw herself into her classwork and discovered she actually really liked it. You can catch her now in class finishing up her degrees in both Creative Writing, and Gender and Women’s Studies. Both of which make sense for Olivia, whose most prominent passions seem to be reading and discussing human rights. I know what you’re thinking; “That’s every college kid!” It’s clear, though, Olivia’s passions come from a place more genuine than just college enlightenment. They’re part of her core foundation.
Ashley: Who are three of your role models?
Olivia: Natalie Portman…love of my entire life. I’ve been in love with her since second grade and she’s never let me down. She was at the Women’s March, she has really cool views on things, she’s just the best. I love her so much and wish I was as good as her but I could never be because she’s on another level.
Ashley: What was she in that made you love her in 2nd grade?
Olivia: Um, Star Wars? She was Padme Amidala, one of my all time favorite characters. Plus second grade Olivia didn’t know that she liked girls yet. But she might’ve had an inkling. Probably, for writing, Tina Fey is another one of my role models. My aunt calls me “Tina Fey” sometimes because she says I remind her of Tina, which I don’t think is necessarily true but it’s a really nice compliment! I’m not going to f***ing shut that down! She’s just great. And the other would have to be…Barack Obama. Final answer!
To be fair, although Tina Fey is a total queen, she’s also human (probably), so we can all relate. Especially to her awkward beginnings. We all have to find our voice somehow. For Tina Fey, it was through writing comedy. For Olivia Pexton, it was writing Scooby Doo knock-off mysteries.
Ashley: Recently, your article about YA novels was noticed by some of the very authors you wrote about. If you had to tell them an embarrassing anecdote from your childhood, what would it be?
Olivia: When I was in third grade, I stapled papers together to make my own book and wrote about a gang who solves mysteries with their dog. Which is crazy, cause I wonder where I got that idea. Its name was Shadow though, because it’s the name I wanted for my own dog. So they get trapped in a wall by ghosts, and I don’t remember how they got out, but I remember that they were trapped in the walls and the dog has to get them out.
It doesn’t matter how we got here, all that matters is that we eventually did.
Moroever, one of the best things about Olivia, though, is her total openness.
“I’m shameless,” Olivia notes. “Half the time I’m like ‘this is a dumb picture… Instagram it.’”
She wears her bisexuality on her sleeve (or her body, in the form of her “Hella Bi” shirt), she’ll let you stalk her (hot) brother’s Instagram and proudly point out how well he can pull off looking like Peter Parker, and she will pick favorites when it comes to friendship.
Ashley: If you could only communicate with one person for the rest of your life, who would it be?
Olivia: Mo. Mo’s my favorite person and everybody knows this. On New Years I was kind of drunk and I was with my hometown friends – of course I was kind of drunk, it was New Year’s – and Mo was with us. So I said, “Mo’s my favorite person, f*** all of you guys!” Mo was like, “You can have multiple favorite people!” and I was like, “No, in this moment, I cannot.”
This openness continues when I tell her she must participate in a lightning round of questions, where she has to answer 6/10 questions right in one minute or post an embarrassing photo of herself in this article. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t complete the challenge. Fortunately for us, we get this out of it: What else can be said about Olivia? It’s rare to find a person secure enough with themselves to unapologetically be the person they truly are, and Olivia manages to do that every single day. The pizza delivery industry is lucky to have her (and so are we, at Her Campus!) So if you read this and see her around, strike up a conversation and experience it for yourself, because she handles strangers throwing themselves at her weirdly well. Just don’t touch her too much (that’s not even a luxury Mo has earned yet).