Theme 1: Learning

The question that I have to answer is what has been a learning experience that has impacted me most in life? Looking at this question, you may think that it's easy to answer and that you have so many things to talk about, but which one do you choose. I do have something that over powers all of my experiences in life. I could talk about my lesson in interviewing that was a very hard one to swallow (I interviewed bands at The Vans Warped Tour, last year) and I could talk about my experiences now (I may interview Miss April from Playboy). Mine is about how life takes an unexpected turn and throws you a major curve ball.

When I was a senior in high school (back in 1999), I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life or why I was going to college. I knew one thing was for certain, I wanted to be involved in music. I wanted to be a rock star. That's all I ever wanted as a child, but there was one major problem with that. I couldn't sing, play an instrument, and never had vocal lessons. I met a teacher's aid that year that was going to Stonehill College and he introduced me to the world of Radio Broadcasting and that absolutely amazed me. I never thought that I would be able to do what they did or if I even had the talent to do what guys like Howard Stern did for a living. So, I started going to school at Massasoit because my grades were never that good in High School and I got involved with their radio program. I was having fun being on the air, skipping classes, hanging out with girls, and then one day it all ended with the snap of a finger. I was put on academic probation and my girlfriend at the time told me she was pregnant. What is a guy to do?

I decided I needed to take some time off from school because I had bigger things to deal with at the time and I listened to the tapes I made at school of my radio shows and I was horrible. My girlfriend eventually lost the baby and I was still not ready to go back to school. I ended up working full time at a gas station for the next six years of my life and I felt hopeless until a voice was heard that woke me up. A kid that had started working at my gas station looked at me and said, "Man, you should go back to school and do something with entertainment." I sort of treated it like, "what are you nuts, I'm too old for that now." The kid bought me a tape recorder and told me to start practicing. He would say your only going to get better if you practice. So, I took his advice and started messing around with the tape recorder. I started to notice that I was getting better, but I still was enrolled back in college. One day, my bosses came to me and told me, "Eddie, we're selling the business and your probably going to get laid off." I could have panicked, but I wasn't willing to be a loser anymore. I went down to Massasoit and I signed up. I had a lot of challenges in my way.

The first challenge was I needed to pass an English comp class with a 3.5 or better and I did that. I needed to pass 75% of my classes the next semester and did that. I was a changed man and more serious because it took me to feel like I was hitting rock bottom, to get me to rise back to the top. Now I'm a student at Bridgewater State University with my own radio show called, Pedal To The Metal and as music video show out of my local access channel called, "The Monster Hour". I'm starting to get interview requests with all sorts of different entertainment figures because I refused to lie down and become another townie failure.

The event that changed me and Impacted me the most was the disappointing direction I was heading in to the resurrection of a dream.