SAMANTHA DEFAZIO
I grew up in a bad neighborhood. My family was poor. My Dad was an alcoholic, and there was a lot of the typical domestic violence type stuff. I'm trying not to sound like an after-school special, unfortunately it's the truth.
Finally when I was about 12 my mom, my sister, and I got fed up and got a restraining order against my dad, and my mom divorced him. The only problem with that was my mom was in her last year of college getting her teaching degree and was not working. So I got a job at this small factory in my neighborhood, getting paid under the table, to help out with the bills. My mom graduated college and became a substitute teacher because she could not find a permanent position. But we were just not making ends meet, so the government put our house up for sheriff’s sale.
We found a small place to live and tried to start over again. I was working a lot to help my mom pay the bills and it was getting harder and harder to go to school everyday. It's not that I didn't want to go. I am not stupid. In fact, I was in the Gifted program at my school. I was just tired. So I dropped out of school and got my GED. I was 16 at the time and my future was looking pretty sad.
I have worked fulltime in several different jobs since I've been 12. I've worked in factories, grocery stores, gas stations, bookstores, as a telemarketer (I can't tell you how many times I've gotten hung up on), and now I'm a security guard. I could never stay in one job for very long because they were all so boring and the pay was not very good either. I could never put “I enjoy” and “my job” in the same sentence, and the way things were going I would never be able to.
When I was 18 my mom met a guy and got married but I didn't get along with him so I moved out and got an apartment with some of my friends. I don't mean to bore you with all the depressing stories. I'm not the type of person that has something bad happen to them and then sits there and cries “why me?” I believe everything happens for a reason. So when something goes wrong I think: “ok what do I have to do to make things better?”
The point that I was trying to get to before I started rambling on is that no matter how bad things got, all I had to do was turn on some music and all of my problems seemed to just melt away. Music was the only thing that could calm me down and make me sane. I love all kinds of music, some kinds more than others. I would have to say that hip-hop is my favorite. Hip-hop has had a very profound effect on my life. I have always been inspired by how the beats of a song can make you feel. Any chance that I got to go to a concert or just to a show featuring the local groups, I was there. I always wanted to know how it all came together to sound so good. Music is the universal language. No matter where you’re from, everybody listens to some kind of music. My little sister use to make fun of me because if I wasn't at work, I was sitting in front of my stereo making tapes of my favorite songs.
When I would go to my friends’ houses and everybody was partying, I would be playing the songs for people to dance to or going through their CDs looking for something else to put on from what has now become my very large tape collection.
One day one of my friends who I had made a tape for said: “Sam, you should do this for a living.” I laughed at first and then thought why not? I always knew deep down inside that I wanted so bad to be a part of making the music that I craved to hear; to be behind the scenes with the people that I listened to everyday. But how do I do that? So I got on the Internet and looked up schools for audio engineering. I found a couple schools but none of them were close to where I lived. I really liked one that was in Orlando, Florida. It really seemed like a good school. Even though it was pretty expensive and Florida is not the cheapest place to live, I knew if I could just get there that I could do it. Any money that I could put aside I did. It was not easy due to the circumstances I explained earlier. For 4 years I saved. Then one day, about a month ago, everything I owned was stolen from me while I was at work (never trust anybody). I had no choice but to move in with my mother. It's funny, though. Remember how I said I feel everything happens for a reason? Well, if I hadn't have gotten robbed then I wouldn't have been on my mom’s computer and I wouldn't have seen your ad for the GET-A-MENTOR program. I saw it as a sign that my dream is possible. By the way, I had about 4000 dollars stolen off of me. The same price for your program, irony don't you love it? Now I'm just going to put myself in debt to pay for the program. I'm looking at it as an investment in my future. A future that now seems a little better thanks to you.
Thanks for the chance,
Samantha DeFazio
