I was dishwasher, then promoted to chef in a local kitchen in a restaurant in Seattle, and I was working on a building site as well, putting in insulation and painting houses, and then doing some classes at a community college nearby.
I've taken every writing class I've had available. I took classes in high school, and I took English and writing classes in community college, but I dropped out of college. I also attended a local writing workshop two years ago.
While I was at community college, I studied industrial design because I thought maybe I'd be an automotive designer - I grew up in Detroit - and I also studied, geology because I was interested in science, a little bit.
I worked at a movie theater in Tempe, Arizona, when I went to community college there. And I got fired because a sorority had rented out a theater to watch 'Titanic,' and they were being really rude to me while they were waiting for the movie. So as I tore their tickets, I told them the end of the movie.
My dad had to quit school when he was in third grade. My mom had to quit school. They didn't know what I needed, and I didn't know what I needed to keep wrestling and go to school, so that's why I had to go to community college.
I went to community college for about a year but I'd started taking music seriously by then so I dropped out.
I had gone to nursing school at Northampton Community College in my hometown of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. And nursing didn't feel quite right, and an old boyfriend gave me a 35-millimeter camera just to play with. So, I took a darkroom class.
I got expelled from high school, and then did my exams from home. I decided, through that experience, that I was going to expediate my plan and didn't go to university. Instead, I went to a community college and studied the theory and history of film with the idea that I wanted to write and direct.
After I left high school and got my GED, I studied broadcast journalism for a year at a community college.
I might say that in retrospect, looking at where the community college system is today, I think we may have gone too far. The community college system is so big, so broad, so consuming of tax money.
