Official Introduction

Hey ya'll!
Welcome to my DCP blog, home to my adventure in the Disney College Program for the Fall 2013 semester. I'm Patsy-Jane, but most people just call me Patsy. I'm 17 years old, but will be turning 18 in July (the first!) so I will be of age by the time the program starts. I currently attend Georgia Perimeter College, completing my core courses, and plan on transferring to Georgia State University to complete my degree in Film Studies. My check-in date is August 26th, 2013, but I will be leaving my home in Atlanta, GA on August 24th for the 8 hour car trip to Florida with my mom!
Since almost everyone does an overview of the DCP on their blog, I'll skip that and just direct you here, so you can look at everything for yourself. To answer a couple questions that personally apply to me:

• I am not receiving college credit for the program - BY MY OWN CHOICE. I could take classes from GPC while there, but I am choosing not to.
• I was selected to participate in the Program as an Attractions cast member - my first choice! (More about Attractions later!)
• I do plan on trying to take one of the Disney offered classes, Disney Heritage, once registration for those opens up.

So that's enough of the basics...here's a little bit about me in some handy-dandy bullet points:

• My birthday is July 1, 1995
• I'm an only child
• I have been born and raised in Atlanta
• I was homeschooled for my 6th-12th grade years & graduated a year early, a few months before my 17th birthday
• I began college in August of 2012 & finished my first "year" (2 semesters) in May of 2013 with a 4.0 both semesters

 I think that was pretty descriptive as far as I go... Now this is when I'm going to get long winded and kinda babble-y, so...venture forward at your own risk.


Disney has been something that I have held very near and dear to my heart since before I can remember. Disney was an important aspect in my mom's relationship with her father, and is now important to her and I. My grandfather (her father) passed away when I was 10 months old, so Disney has always been that linking factor. My first visit to Disney World was when I was just 4 years old, but I only remember small aspects. My next trip was when I was 6, with just my mom. Since then, we have gone again in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2011, & 2013 (9 trips total.) I have only been to Disneyland & California Adventure once, in the Fall of 2006. In my opinion, Disney World in Orlando is much better. However, my view of Disneyland may be slightly tainted by the fact that the one day I had at the park was also the one day on our 2 week trip that the entirety of Orange County schools were out.

Since my Disney life has begun, I have fallen in love with the Disney way of storytelling. Anyone who has been to a Disney park has experienced it, but for those who haven't, this is a simple concept of it: The queue of a ride/attraction (the area where you wait) is called "Scene 1" and is where the story actually begins. Many of Disney's attractions' "Scene 1" extends to beyond the queue and lays strictly in the facade (an example: the facade of the Haunted Mansion on either coast.) In addition to the concept of "Scene 1," Disney also does something that many other amusement park companies could benefit from: When designing a ride, everything is laid out as if the ride were actually a movie, with storyboards and scripts - the whole nine yards. This leads me into the whole reason for going into this tangent: My dream.

I have always been a writer - dictating a story called "How the Grinch Stole Halloween," which is almost exactly "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," but with my favorite holiday - Halloween, at the age of 4 (which was then written down by my nanny on the back of an envelope.) Writing has been something that I have progressively gotten better at and have always loved (I should also add that I love books and reading, though I have regrettably not had any time to read since starting college.) Writing is in my bones, but I never wanted to make a career of it as I know that I'm not as talented as any of my favorite authors, such as Stephen Chobosky (the author of my all time favorite book, The Perks of Being a Wallflower) or Cassandra Clare (the author of a fantastic series The Mortal Instruments & the prequel to that series The Infernal Devices) so I dismissed any ideas of going after a career in which I would be writing. One of my other loves has been graphic design since I was about 8 years old and started to make photographic blends on MS Paint (they were horrid, but quite good for an 8 year old on Paint.) That progressed, but I have never been excessively talented at it, but good enough to make my own desktop wallpapers and such. I planned, for many years, to go to Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) for a degree in Graphic Design, but GD has become such a competitive program anywhere and I didn't feel too keen on it anymore. One day, my mom and I were in the car and she said something that just hit me like a ton of bricks because it was purely genius: "What about Imagineering?"

For those of you who don't know, an Imagineer is the brains and creativity behind absolutely everything you see in a Disney Park - from the script of a ride, to the way something is constructed, to the murals that decorate a wall. Upon looking into some of the Imagineering fields, there was one that popped out more than anything else: Show Writer. Before anyone jumps to conclusions, a Show Writer does not just write the shows like Beauty & the Beast or Voyage of the Little Mermaid. A Show Writer in Imagineering is the one that scripts out and designs the way a story is told within...well, most anything, but specifically the attractions. The idea of being able to tell a story that millions upon millions of people can enjoy over and over again; something that people can experience and not just watch...that idea is the pinnacle of perfection for me.

Following this epiphany, I began looking at schools with Writing programs, however, most were just for journalistic professions. Upon further research and talking to a good friend of mine, Rebecca, I decided to go into the Film Studies program at Georgia State University. GSU has one of the best programs around, and Rebecca was in the program at the time (she has just graduated - GO BECCA!) so I knew it was going to be a good fit for me.

With homeschooling, I was on track to graduate a year early, after having skipped the 8th grade to see if I was ever going to learn something new, so my parents and I made the decision to get my core work done at a local community college, Georgia Perimeter. Research was done and GPC has a program for transfer, so I'm currently enrolled in that.


I think this has been long enough for one post...my next post will cover my DCP journey from start to...now!

Just a quick picture of me!