BA History and Politics of the Americas, 2018-2021
![Photograph of Max Traeger Photograph of Max Traeger](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/americas/sites/americas/files/styles/non_responsive/public/max_traeger.jpg?itok=xmtl6kJj)
The responsibility and freedom given to me as a student has left me with much gratitude for the course. I felt supported enough to be able to turn around in my final year and propose a rather unusual dissertation on the Voyager Golden Record*. I loved writing it and I am grateful beyond belief to my supervisors Nadia Hilliard and Gareth Davies. It is an immense credit to my peers on the course and the staff of the Institute that a worldwide plague striking halfway through my degree did not stop me feeling nurtured, inspired, and among friends. You only experience being an undergraduate once, and I am so thankful that my experience was as a student at the Institute of the Americas.
* What the ever so modest Max fails to mention is that his dissertation was awarded the departmental prize to the best undergraduate dissertation in 2021. And also that he was a member of Team UCL in the first round of the 2021 edition of University Challenge!