Reporter Volume 25, No.28 Commencement Extra

By BETHANY GLADKOWSKI
Reporter Staff
Justyna Braun had no knowledge of English when she emigrated to the
U.S. at age 13, but that has not prevented her from excelling as an
English major at UB.
	Born and raised in Wroclaw, Poland, Justyna moved with her
family to the U.S. in 1986 when her father was offered a teaching job
at Swarthmore College, Pa. 
	Although she says she presented a tremendous challenge to her
high school teachers, who had rarely dealt with non-English speaking
students, today Justyna is fluent in three languages. (In addition to
speaking Polish and English, she spent her junior year of college at
the Sorbonne in Paris, France, which she says "brought my French to
perfection.") She's also an avid hiker, and enjoys fencing in her free
time.
	A student in UB's honors program, Justyna is the recipient of
the Grace Capen Memorial Award and a candidate for the Mellon
Scholarship and Javitz Fellowship. She has applied to ten graduate
schools, including Princeton and Johns Hopkins, and has been accepted
to the University of California, Irvine. Her future plans include
becoming a professor of comparative literature and traveling to Italy,
Scotland, and England.

Q. You said that after your family moved here, you went through a
"pilgrimage" of high schools, virtually every time your father got a
new appointment. Has your education suffered because of this?
A. I think certain aspects have, such as history and the sciences. The
schools all took such different approaches that I couldn't fill in the
gaps. But the opportunity to travel and to try communicating with
people in their languages (like Spanish in California) was valuable,
something I will never forget. By age 19 I was fluent in French, so my
favorite subjects were naturally math and French. English came as a
by-product of my love for literature and reading.

Q. You spent your childhood in Poland, your adolescence in four
different states in the U.S. (Pennsylvania, California, New York and
Minnesota), and you've studied in France for a year. You've been
exposed to such a variety of culturesQin which do you feel most "at
home"?
A. European culture is more suited to my personality in its customs,
dress, and the way people do thingsQthe human aspect. But America is
the only place where a foreigner is accepted as "one of the group."
Because so much time has passed, I'm an outsider in Poland.
	American culture is enriched by allowing people to pass
through its borders and still retain parts of their own cultures. For
example, the U.S. does not require fluency in the language in order to
enter.

Q. Your father, Kazimierz Braun, is an active and prominent member of
the theater community at UB and Buffalo. You've had his influence
since you were born. How did you come to study a discipline outside
the performing arts?
A. Growing up in a family of artists and spending lots of time
backstage allowed me to look at theater realistically and concretely
as a profession. I simply felt I was not talented enough to be
successful. And that is a profession at which you can't be successful
if you're only mediocre.

Q. What do you do when you're not studying and attending classes?
A. I work in the Music Library during the summer. In my free time I
try to see my friends. That's very important to me. I also like to
readQsupplement what I don't get in classes. Literature is my life.
And I absolutely love "serious" hiking, mostly in Poland and France.
Yes, this means I live out of a backpack for two weeks. It provides a
healthy antidote to my academics. 

Q. Your father began teaching in the U.S. because of the political
tension in Poland. How did politics in Poland affect your family?
A. All of my family was affected, very deeply. My uncle was imprisoned
for a year, my father was arrested and interrogated, and my
grandfather was arrested and held for five years in the '80s. Since
the 1950s during the Stalin regime, everyone in my family was active
in opposition politics. They all had a deep sense of responsibility to
their country and nation. It was a public cause...morally right. 

Q. What is one thing you would change about UB?
A. Start from scratchQthe architecture is abominable! Aside from that,
it has made me very happy, especially those who've helped me in the
English department. The graciousness I found there is not common.