Being chosen as one of the INVITE fellows in 2018, I found myself in front of a difficult choice: to return to the university getting a chance to make a new experience of rich intercultural exchange in a different country or continuing to work in my homeland and establishing myself as a professional.

The choice was not easy as I knew for sure that the university life was not for me and at the same time it would be a serious challenge to find a different job after the PhD in Literary Studies. Despite of it, I decided to move to Verona, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions in my life!

I decided to move to Verona, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions in my life!

Hasmik Vardanyan

Here I got acquainted with a lot of great people from all over the world and made new friends who brought joy and incredible cultural variety in my life. The warm welcome of the INVITE project team and my supervisor Paolo Pellegrini gave a good start to my new life in my new city. Seminars, conferences, meetings with other PhD students, a great opportunity of a secondment at the University of Notre Dame in the United States!

Then suddenly the pandemic broke out. I was forced to interrupt my secondment in the USA and come back to Italy, finding myself closed at home for months. Even though I had very hard time and difficult moments to overcome in that period, I managed to realize my project and to deliver the thesis in due time.

Yet, the PhD experience didn’t convince me at all to pursue an academic career, just the contrary. I firmly decided to abandon the academia forever and to find myself in a different field. I will always keep the years spent in Verona in my heart as a valuable experience that made me grow as a person.