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"I don't want to end up like Elaine's boss on Seinfeld. What was his name? Mr. Peterman. I'm afraid of turning into Mr. Peterman," says the 24-year-old star of the Life Network's My Global Adventure.
For the next few weeks, though, it'd be hard to blame Nelson, who came home to Calgary last week, for assailing people with tales of her globe-trotting travels.
Last spring she was a news writer at A-Channel with no on-camera experience when she was plucked from more than 500 applicants to host the reality-TV series, which airs Fridays at 8 p.m.
In eight months, she crossed 24 countries and six continents. "It was very fast. We were in a country a maximum of 10 days, so we were trying to take in an enormous amount ...
"But My Global Adventure is about taste-testing these different places. You sample this, and sample that.
"I'll appreciate it more after I've had some rest. It was really just about keeping my head above water. It was a lot to take in and I'll be taking it in for awhile."
Because this is reality-TV -- and what would reality-TV be without people putting themselves in harm's way -- Nelson was put through some rather daunting paces, which were often chosen for her by the Internet audience that watched her travels over the Web.
"Some of them turned out very well. Some of them I could've done without."
Among the highlights were bungee-jumping, getting a Hong Kong tattoo artist to embellish a tattoo she has between her shoulderblades and flying in a jet in Arizona.
"I always wanted to be a pilot since I was four years old and my dad took me to my first air show. But I started getting sick because of the G-forces ... It was stunt-puke-stunt-puke."
While she escaped the bull ring unscathed, her cameraman wasn't quite as fortunate.
"He got butted around a bit ... There was one point where (the bull) came for me and I just got out. I had a bad feeling about it."
Making matters worse in Africa was a case of "deli belly but 10 times worse," which left Nelson and her crew vomiting day and night.
Now back in Calgary, Nelson was set to wrap production on the series' last episode yesterday. Set to air during the Stampede, it has her sampling the local delicacy known as prairie oysters, as well as playing hockey with the Mount Royal Cougars.
With the show behind her, Nelson says her first order of business is "getting away from the cameras and people and interviews. I have a cabin way up north."
After that, she says, "There are so many options. I could do another season of the show or they could do the show without me.
"I could go back to university, or someone who runs NBC could see it and call me up to be David Letterman's sidekick. It's all so new to me."
Almost as new as stepping in front of the cameras was less than a year ago.
"I was never interested in being Barbara Walters. I interviewed 54*40 once for the university paper and that was because I wanted to do it.
"Interviewing people for the show was the toughest part of this job -- and trying to be a quipmeister for hours and hours on end."
Or being on camera for an always-watching Internet audience.
"It was reality. There was the good, the bad and the ugly. The crew helped protect me as much as they could and give me my space when they could tell that I needed it.
"You do expose parts of yourself you'd rather people not see and they go, 'Wow, what a bitch' or 'Wow what an idiot.' You have to get to the point where it didn't matter."