Four time zones, a six and a half hour flight, a 44 hour drive, and a phone call away from where I sit, there is a 23-year-old girl - a dad (we’ll get to that), a writer, the Token Bisexual (maybe this too), or whatever you may call her - probably working on some sort of DIY project or working at a restaurant that’s equally healthy and fattening. She alternates between her natural brown hair and brown hair with a reddish brown hue. Her name is Hannah, spelled the right way, with two H’s. Her room back in Hampden - where she lived from age 8 to age 21 - has bright blue walls, though some swatches of mystery-makeup powder and mascara are still smeared on the walls. There are mirrors littered around the place and an oddly large amount of books for someone who claims to not like reading. She tried to take them to L.A., but her mother said otherwise: “You think I’m going to drag this all the way to the post office and pay for shipping?!”

She keeps up with these gags, or as she likes to call them, “bits.” One of her most notable is her “Best Dad” bit. She owns everything from sweaters to mugs with typical phrases like “#1 Dad,” “Awesome Dad,” and, of course, “Best Dad.” Another one is her “Token Bisexual” bit where, in any conversation where she feels the need to insert her opinion as a part of the LGBTQ+ community, she starts her claim with, “As the Token Bisexual in the room…” Though short and simplistic, it always earns a few chuckles.

She seems to have limitless confidence and pride in who she is and what she does. She carries it on her wherever she walks; head held up, each step being one closer to her end goal.  Though, she does not seem to think this. “Like, I’m not confident all the time, like, I don’t think anyone is. Like, I’m a little crybaby.” Beneath the pile of unnecessary “Like”s, she makes a good point. Though viewed as someone so bold, she does not seem to think the same about herself. At family gatherings, her little brother sticks by her to meet those he wouldn’t naturally interact with, though there are some people both of them avoid. This does, however, make quite an odd sight as there is a 5’8” kid awkwardly shuffling behind a 5’3” queen.  When talking about this, she mentioned self-assurance and positivity, saying “I just want [to prove] I went to therapy.”

She does, however, feel down about herself every now and then, like the best of us. “No one’s 100% anything 100% of the time...Like, I’m an asshole, I do shitty things all the time.”When talking about regrets, she mentions things that she does regret, but that she wouldn’t go back and change if given the chance. She calls that “objective perspective.” When explaining this, she says, “I hate when people are like, ‘I just like don’t regret anything!’ It’s like, ‘Alright Synthia, how about you go back pinning your Pinterest blogs like a normal breakfast-brunch-b****.’” She does regret things, just not in the most traditional sense. The situations that she wished turned out differently, but wouldn’t go back and change were based on things like emotion, adrenaline, or just pure drunken mistake, not poor logic.

She mentioned a story where she claims to have been under such and influence at a friend’s party - that she and said friend’s girlfriend threw -  that she ended up insisting that a playing card was her ID whilst refusing to show it to the bouncer. She did in fact have her ID on her, but she refused to show that as well. After explaining this, she simply says, “So if I’m a shit head 20 days of the year, I think that’s a good ratio.”

“I get bloated once every month, like every other bitch,” she adds, “I gain five pounds and I’m like, ‘This is shitty.’...I’m a crybaby.” She doesn’t believe that she portrays herself as limitlessly confident, but she does say that she tries to see the good in herself. She states that she is very proud of her accomplishments, her proudest of which is coming in seventh place in her fourth grade spelling bee, according to her, but a close second would have to be creating an award-winning app in college by having her naive teacher essentially make it from what Hannah had written down the day before it was due. When giving a presentation about it, she was extremely unprepared and proceeded to spend the duration of the time talking about a grilled-cheese sandwich she had for lunch earlier.

Her way of going to college was a bit abnormal, but genius in its own right. She applied for a program at Bay Path College that mainly older adults go to, but she did get accepted. It was a two-year Saturday program where she would get intense homework and online classes throughout the week and then go to class from early in the morning to late at night on Saturdays. Though difficult, she stuck with it because it worked with her working hours. However, when it came to her graduation, she seemed to value her precious sleeping time on Fridays more than a crowd applauding her work. “Look, I was tired.”

After those two years, she went to Ithaca College in upstate New York. She applied for another two-year plan and got in again. This had more of a typical day-to-day schedule with holiday time to go home (which she always made sure to do). After the two years, she nearly slept through another graduation, but she luckily remembered to set an alarm the night before.

Both of these colleges are usually four-year colleges, so after doing only two years at both, it effectively made it seem as though she went through eight years of college.

From Hampden to L.A., confidence to crybaby, and from spelling bees to grilled cheese, Hannah is a wonder of a woman.