When I ask Hannah Moskowitz (W ’26) to describe herself, she tells me she lives her life in a “centrifugal force, where, if you attach a ball to a string and you swing it around, it’s gonna lift up and go as wide as the string will let it.” On the surface, that tracks. Hannah exists within multiple worlds—comedy, athletics, business, and education, flitting between them at a pace that’s hard to keep up with. But all that outward motion originates from a single center—and the more time you spend with Hannah, the more that center comes into focus. Her diverging interests aren’t different worlds, but rather just different ways of being exactly who she is.
Hannah studies operations, information, and decisions in the Wharton School, but she carries herself with a lightness typically not seen with business students burdened by recruitment worries. Instead, she spends her free time writing sketches for Bloomers Comedy. That outlet suits her, as she’s drawn more to hands–on, practical work than to abstract theory and long readings—quite ironic, given that she plans to become a history teacher. Although the grounded work she wanted wasn’t necessarily what she found in her degree, Hannah doesn’t regret it because she believes “there is an inherent value to range of experience.”
That philosophy carries into everything she’s done. From the moment Hannah stepped foot on campus, she was immediately set on trying anything that came her way. An invitation from her freshman year residential advisor to stop by a rugby practice turned into a three–year commitment to the women’s club rugby team—which unfortunately came to a halt after she broke her collarbone at a tournament in her junior spring. While Hannah misses both the sport itself and her teammates, she finds that not playing rugby has given her more time to explore other interests. “It's not like I was necessarily looking to have my theater outlet, and now my sports outlet,” she explains. “But when someone told me, ‘Hey, do you want to come by a rugby practice?’ I liked the idea of being able to call up my mom and be like, ‘Guess what I'm trying this week!’”
A more natural choice for Hannah was her decision to join Bloomers Comedy. She was no stranger to the stage, having done improv for most of her high school years. But after seeing the free show that Bloomers put on during New Student Orientation, she was hooked. “I was just like, ‘Bloomers is lit!’” she recalls. “The people seemed lit, and I thought that their sense of humor was the most closely aligned to mine. That was kind of the first thing I dug my heels into at Penn.” This “digging in” motivated her rise from a cast member to director, which, for her, was an obvious choice; there weren’t many people in her Bloomers class to fill the position, and she always wanted to be in a role that would allow her to create a vision rather than just participate in one. She was largely motivated by her mentor—an upperclassman who picked her out of the crowd—who taught her about everything from writing sketches to how to think about comedy, eventually inspiring her to give that same attention and direction to future Bloomers.
Though Hannah came into Penn not knowing who she would be or what activities she would be involved in, she knew exactly what she wanted to do after: education. Having grown up around parents who were educators, she describes herself as an “educational nepo baby”—an identity that was further reinforced by her extensive tutoring and teaching assistant experience. For her, education is more than simply communicating information. She sees it as a kind of performance—one that will satisfy the Bloomers itch once she graduates. “You have a classroom of 32 kids that have no other choice but to sit and listen to you,” Hannah explains. “I’m like, ‘This is my dream.’”
Above all else, Hannah prides herself on her authenticity. As someone who spent most of high school code–switching between different versions of herself depending on the room she was in and the people she was interacting with, she understands the inherent exhaustion that comes with juggling multiple identities. When I ask her if any of those old tensions resurface given the different worlds she occupies at Penn, she ponders my question for just a moment. “No,” she finally says. “I honestly have trouble understanding when people express that tension in their life. I feel like it’s way less tiring to interact in any space when you feel like you can be fairly consistent.” The proof is in her friendships. Where most people maintain subtly different versions of themselves for different social circles—balancing “club friends” and “class friends”—Hannah brings the same funny, vivid demeanor to everyone she meets. That way, she can (and does) sit five of her friends from completely different parts of her life down for dinner and only has to worry about whether she’ll run out of food.
If Hannah’s life is a centrifugal force, her center of gravity is what she calls “variety for variety’s sake.” People often express a mix of surprise and envy over her ability to juggle so many things, which she finds puzzling. “I think it would be harder for me to not do very different things,” she says. “I think that I’d get really bored very quickly.” Hannah’s honest about how she got here, though. Most of it was accidental: “I was in a mindset where I was willing to accidentally fall into a lot of different things.” That openness and willingness, she thinks, is more accessible to people than they realize. Most people underestimate their own agency and what they could reasonably achieve if they attempted something.
That said, variety for variety’s sake has its limits, and Hannah knows them. She never found the time to pick up multiple minors, rush a business fraternity, or participate in communities that constitute a big part of other Penn students’ lives. But to Hannah, this isn’t something to mourn, and rather the cost of doing things she actually cares about. It is only through this strict prioritization that Hannah can derive the energy to “run [herself] ragged” for the things she loves.
