Every time I step into a store, a restaurant, or a friend's car, the song that is playing is the very first thing that I notice. Whether that is a result of growing up with a dad that quizzed me on every song that came on the radio or my infatuation with the SongPop app, my ever-growing thirst to find my next on-repeat obsession has been consistent for the better part of a decade now. When my college roommates and I would go out for food or to a bar, we would play a game of who could guess the year or come closest to guessing the year that the song playing had come out. A coworker-become-close-friend and I make a video every end of December each going through our top 20 favorite releases of the year (not to be confused with my annual end of year concert recap video). To put it simply, music is my life.

        I spent the past 6 months living in Australia, chasing around some of my favorite Australian bands. I met some incredible people and am able to tell some incredible stories, but most importantly, it was there that I came to the conclusion that I need to something involving music. I find that I am at my very happiest when I'm watching a band/artist playing their hearts out, that I consciously and subconsciously steer every new conversation towards music, and that when I recently returned back home and someone asks me to tell them anything about my past few months, my mind immediately goes to one of my many adventures surrounding music. Some of those adventures include but are not limited to: being let into Laneway Festival for free through the artists' entrance, being posted on Rum Jungle's Instagram story, having a song dedicated to me by CHEEKY LEASH at their gig in Brisbane, ending up at the afterparty of the Terrys and DMA's (separate occasions), and skydiving on my very last day on the continent because it's what my favorite Aussie band did to cap off their hectic 2019 tour. 

        It was completely stepping outside of my comfort zone, flying across the world to a place without knowing a soul that I realized life was too beautiful and precious to spend it working with something I'm not passionate about. 

        Through my sophomore to senior year at Clemson University, I was apart of their college radio station, WSBF-FM. By the end of my junior year and for the entirety of my senior year, I had my very own radio show which I I titled "Timeless Tunes", where I played music from various decades (similar to the Spectrum). Each week would showcase a new theme along with new songs from the week before, a song to celebrate the day's (often random) holiday, and a friend or two joining me to talk about their own music tastes. What initiated from wandering into an interest-level meeting at the station turned into my favorite two hours of every week, and something that I dearly miss today. I was also a member of the station's event team which helped organize a few shows around campus a few times each semester. Through these two experiences, along with the time I spent assisting a friend operating a merch stand and my ever-growing passion for music, I know I would prove to be worth given a shot at the music haven that is SiriusXM.