Paula Warrick is Director of the Merit Awards Office in the Career Center at American University. Paula is Vice-president of NAFA.

Beth Powers: What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Paula Warrick: I studied art history and am fairly visually oriented. Happiness for me is a day off to indulge in my passion for looking at things—sand not just works of art! Among my favorite places is the National Aquarium in Baltimore with its huge assortment of colorful, delicate sea creatures.

BP: What is your favorite aspect of scholarship work?
PW: Helping students to “connect the dots” between their diverse experiences–and to set new, more focused goals for themselves.

BP: Least favorite?
PW: My university is home to lots of international and part-time students who are self-financing terminal master’s degrees. I am frustrated by my inability to help most of them in any substantial way (due to a lack of scholarships).

BP: Which historical figure do you most identify with?
PW: Brahms comes to mind for his studiousness and sense of perfectionism–he ripped up completed works that did not live up to his standards! In all seriousness, I admire Brahms for his patience, his ability to see beauty in a variety of music (such as folk songs), and his approach to instrumentation.

BP: Which campus offices do you work most closely with in supporting/ identifying candidates?
PW: Our Honors Program and a student leadership program housed in our School of Public Affairs. I also work a great deal with my colleagues in the Career Center.

BP: Which words or phrases do you most overuse in letters of recommendation?
PW: “If I may provide additional testimony on his/her behalf, please do not hesitate to let me know.”

BP: Who are your favorite writers?
PW: I enjoy memoirs and biographies of all sorts. Two memorable books I’ve read recently straddle the line between autobiography and fiction. They are Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, about the Vietnam War, and Albert Camus’s The First Man, set in colonial Algeria and France. I am moved by Camus’s characterization of education as a force that liberates his protagonist yet permanently distances him from his illiterate, impoverished family. His descriptions of Algeria are so vivid.

BP: Where would you like to live?
PW: I’m a “city person” who has deliberately chosen a job in Washington, DC. But I would love to lengthen the vacations I take every year to Utah’s Wasatch mountains. The views are stunning and the air is so dry that the sky is almost violet. My camera has never truly captured the color.

BP: What would you be doing if you weren’t doing scholarship work?
PW: Working in the education department of an art museum or historic home. As a student I worked at the National Gallery, Monticello, and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. I enjoyed these chances to work with the general public and to come to know the art in my immediate environment.