Once upon a time… in the kingdom of Pennsylvania, USA, I became a princess. Everything since has been nothing but magic. I founded and owned a professional character performing company that provided princesses for children’s birthday parties, special events and community engagement activities. This licensed LLC went by the trade name Polar Princesses, and was founded in 2017.  Jump forward to fall 2018, I approached a sociology professor at Penn State University, Altoona Campus. I asked if I would be allowed to take our first exam in intro to sociology, at a later date, as I had a princess party during the scheduled exam time. He inquired as to what Princessing was that day and it became a running conversation between him and I throughout the semester. Towards the end of the semester this professor, Dr. Nicholas J. Rowland, asked if I would be interested in participating in undergraduate research. Thus the Penn State Princess Project was born.  (Please see the tab entitled Research, for more extensive details.) The Princess Project, as it was known in short, became the center of my world. We began collecting primary data through surveys and qualitative interviews. I was fortunate enough to compete in several research events and even won an award for Excellence in Information Literacy from the Penn State University Libraries. The 2018-2019 school year was a whirlwind.

I became a member of the Penn State Altoona Honors Program the following year and graduated with a bachelors in history, a minor in sociology and a certification in Holocaust and genocide studies. I began my graduate career in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.