When I was a teenager, I spent my days holed up in my room indulging my most fangirly tendencies. From scouring Twitter for fan photos of Harry Styles’s latest rock-god hair transformation to breaking down the latest viral Pretty Little Liars theory point by point — I was the textbook definition of a fangirl.

Then something crazy happened: I got hired as the entertainment editor at Seventeen.com. Of course, a few things happened before that. I studied communications at UMass Amherst. Then I got my masters in magazine and online journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University. And there was an internship along the way.