Truth be told, I didn't want to be on T.V. I was going to be a writer or producer or a director, and at the end of my sophomore year, my department chairman put me up for a job doing weekend weather in Syracuse, New York.
I majored in extracurriculars, honestly. I joined the Harvard Stand Up Comedy Society, which is a ragtag band of misfits. I wrote for 'On Harvard Time,' which was a student TV show trying to be 'The Daily Show.' And I wrote a humor column for 'The Crimson' starting my sophomore year.
I went to Indiana University for college for a couple of years, where I double majored in dance and journalism, and after my sophomore year there, I went to the San Francisco Ballet school for the summer, but then they offered me a scholarship to stay for the year.
By junior high, I was a horrible student. But during my sophomore year of high school, I did have a fabulous English teacher, and I would go to school just for her class and then skip out afterwards. That's actually when I started writing, although I didn't think of it then as something I might someday do.
I was just this little theater geek. I joined the drama program my freshman year. I read the morning announcements my sophomore year. I didn't have to eat in the cafeteria with everyone else because my drama teacher was cool. Everybody knew who I was, and that's all I ever wanted as a theater kid.
I actually wanted to be a police officer like my dad for the longest time, up until my sophomore year in high school when I started doing plays. I did plays when I was little, but in high school, I started getting into acting.
Sophomore year, I got hit in the stomach playing football, and I was out of school for four months. I was in the hospital for two and then out of school for two.
I knew I did not want to be a doctor; my parents kept talking to me about that. I wanted to be an NBA player, but around freshman and sophomore year, I stopped growing, so that was the end of that.
I used to sit in bed at night and flip through design-school catalogs. I found out that Parsons accepted a small number of high school juniors, so I applied my sophomore year and got in.
Baseball was always my favorite sport, and I thought it would be the sport I'd pursue for the long term. But I guess about my sophomore year in high school, I started really getting into football, and then it just took off from there.
