Jacob Payne
Elec. Prog. (MW)
England
4/25/12
Assignment # 7: Assessment

Toward the end of high school, close friends and family members began hounding me about what I wanted to study in college. They were curious if I had put any thought into what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. At that point, there was no other question I feared more. My childhood, similar to anyone else’s, was filled with many dreams and much optimism. My parents did what they were supposed to do as parents and abstained from putting a cap on my imagination. I had big league aspirations of playing major league baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals, refusing to leave the backyard until I hit 70 homeruns, just like Mark McGwire. Unfortunately, it appeared with age that I actually sucked at most sports and would have to choose a new career path.
Along with an undying love for the redbirds, my father also force fed me an affection for singing. So much so that I was an active member of choir programs all the way from elementary to high school. It was somewhere around my junior high days when a friend of mine came to me and requested that I became the newest front man of his garage band, Junk in the Trunk. I accepted the offer without hesitation and we immediately began preparing for the end of school talent show. The song that we had decided on performing in front of all of our peers was Creed’s “Six Feet from The Edge” (still the only song I know by Creed). We hit the ground running and things were looking pretty good for Junk in the Trunk, up until the auditions. I had been whaling away when it was just us practicing in our rhythm guitarist’s pool house, but for some reason things just did not go well for me when I sang in front of people. We were literally stuck after school for hours auditioning in the gym, starting the song over and over because I could not for the life of me remember the lyrics. It was one of the most painful afternoons of my life. After the failed seventh and eighth attempts, the band decided to go in a different direction and reasoned that it would be better if they just played an instrumental version of the song, without me. Just like that, my singing days were over.
I had reached a point in my life where I had to set aside boyhood delusions and start seriously considering my future. I still had no answer for my friends and family, life after high school was starting to look pretty bleak. Then a follow up question was finally asked of me: “Well, what do you like to do?” I began to think. I liked sports, but I was uncoordinated and had zero balance. I liked to sing, but my singing was best reserved for my ears only in a sound-proof shower stall. Other than that, all I really liked to do was watch TV. That was the day I decided what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I wanted to work in television.
Since