I have always had interest in music, but had never thought about pursuing an education pertaining to it. Ever since I was old enough to talk, I would sing songs I heard on the radio. I even remember putting on headphones in the car on long road trips and my parents getting mad at me for singing too loud from the back seat. There are numerous home videos in their possession of me dancing around as a 3-4 year old little girl, wearing over-ear headphones way too big for my head, singing as loud as I could to burned CD's my dad would make me for my walkman CD player. Because of this interest, my mom put me in piano lessons for around 6 years when I was younger, but once she gave me the choice to continue the lessons, I had lost interest in the instrument. Later, when I was in junior high school, I decided to try orchestra and play the viola. But, once the school year was over, I had no interest in this instrument either. Eventually, my dad's uncle gifted me an Ibanez guitar for my 11th birthday after playing around on his on a camping trip. Since then, I have been in and out of guitar lessons, but kept interest in this instrument. At my high school we were required to do senior projects in order to graduate. To summarize it, we had to have 25 hours put into a project of our choice with parts of the project pertaining to Math/Science, Arts, Humanities, and History while the project as a whole fit under one subject. My senior project was on music. I built a guitar, wrote and performed an original song, and made a timeline of historical events in music. This was the point when I realized I needed to have music be a bigger part of my life. This project that everyone was dreading was something I was enjoying!

 

I began my college education at Utah State University pursuing a degree in Business Administration. I looked into some schools with programs that had something to do with producing music, but a lot of them that I found information on were pretty far away. I knew I didn't want to do anything with performance or composition, but wanted to go into a program that was worthwhile and could get me a good job. I thought if I could get a degree in business first, then I could look into some trade schools for music production later on. My second year in, I started to really dislike the classes and wondered if this was really something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I started looking into music production programs again. The digital audio program at UVU showed up on a list among other schools in big cities such as LA or New York City. A month or two later, I made the 2 and a half hour drive from Logan to Orem to meet with an advisor to discuss how transferring would work and learn more about the program. I left the meeting ready to transfer the next semester, excited to finally be pursuing something I had a real interest in. 

 

As far as career goals go, I would love to someday run my own record label. There are so many artists that would rather work without a label because a lot of labels and producers want to shape the artist into who they want the public to see them as, rather than a creator of their own art sharing that with the world. This can affect the music they are putting out. I want to change that for someone. I want to work with artists who are aiming strictly to touch people with the art they are making and help them to do that. This is a huge goal to have, but not impossible. Whichever path I end up on will take work, and it will not come easily, but I am ready to start at the bottom and learn all that I need in order to keep working towards these goals.