Nanette Pawelek

After high school I went straight to UVSC (now UVU) and finished my Bachelor’s degree in English and Literature in 2004. I was pretty ecstatic to write about subjects concerning popular culture, literature, and film and realized that I had an insatiable thirst for knowledge. In the summer of 2004, I moved to Amsterdam, Holland where I began studying an M.A. in Cultural Analysis at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. On weekends I would hop aboard trains, planes, or catch a ride somewhere from someone and explore the contours of Europe and beyond. I found that education, culture, and backpacking really do it for me in life!
Some memorable trips include: backpacking through the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), discovering my ancestral roots in small villages throughout Poland, basking in the magnificence of fantastic cities such as Vienna, Prague and Budapest, taking off a week in between writing my Master’s thesis and flying into Ljubliana, Slovenia with a friend having absolutely zero plan and trekking through Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Romania, and Bulgaria.

I wrote my Master’s Thesis about an annual rock concert in Nuremberg, Germany held on the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds (die Reichsparteitagesgelände) and finished my M.A. in 2006. In August 2006, I moved to Santa Barbara, California where I’m currently studying a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). I study 20th Century German and American Literature and Film. I passed my first qualifying exam in 2007 which analyzed documentary films about women in Afghanistan, took a lovely trip to Thailand and Cambodia in July 2008 with some friends, and am now working on my second qualifying exam in 20th Century German War narratives while teaching introductory German at UCSB.
I still have a few years before I’m finished, and definitely feel that a Ph.D. is the hardest thing I’ve attempted thus far. I sometimes get impatient with continually living the poor college student life but feel equally lucky that I get to learn and teach everyday and travel during the summers. It is no understatement when I say that travel holds the key to many of my greatest moments and experiences in life.