Greetings Mt. Lebanon! My name is Julie Werner and I just began my fall internship with the Mt. Lebanon Magazine. I’m excited to be here! I graduated a month ago from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in communications and minors in linguistics and Korean. As an active member of the honors college community during my time at Pitt, I’ve had a voice in my life without having to organize social events and conduct discussion sessions. I hope my skills from that college environment can be put to good use professionally while here at mtl.

Here’s an interesting story about my residence history: I was born in Pittsburgh and lived in Mt. Lebanon until kindergarten. At that time, my dad’s job uprooted our family and dropped us in Fairfax, Va., where I spent my days until graduating from James W. Robinson Secondary School in 2011. After I was accepted to Pitt, my parents, who had already been anxiously awaiting the day when we could move back to Pennsylvania and be close to our extended family, immediately packed and transplanted us back to Mt. Lebanon, only two streets over from our old house.

My dad has worked for the federal government for more than 18 years and is tense about his looming retirement, though I wager not as tense as he is at work. My mom has already retired, having dedicated her life to social work and various jobs at local colleges in Virginia. It’s been an amusing dynamic in my household as my parents end their careers as I’m just beginning mine and I hope our attempts to live vicariously through each other aren’t diminished by the stress of such drastic life changes.

In my spare time, I enjoy attending concerts across the city. I even travelled to New York, where I recently attended the EDM festival Mysteryland, and where I will return in September for another festival, Electric Zoo. I love hanging out with my friends and coming up with new restaurants and attractions to visit, to spice up our time together. I especially adore spending time with Skips, my best friends’ 1-year-old Shih Tzu/Chihuahua mix. I do not have any pets of my own, although that is not my choice. Additionally, I have an intense passion for music, which I pursue through the creation of hundreds of playlists through Spotify, my ever-growing CD collection, which now stands at roughly 670 albums, and my first attempt at a music review blog. As a graduation gift, I received a Bose SoundTouch system, which has taken my constant music playing to new volumes–a major upgrade from my previous sound system: the speakers of my 2000 Subaru Forester.