Take one of my freshman-year gigs, for instance—the one involving a music store and a manager who said the job was to play piano during lunch hour to keep customers engaged and shopping. I asked if I could play guitar instead, the instrument I was infinitely more proficient on. Okay, piano it was then. Sophomore year started out more promising when I answered a classified ad to create arrangements for a band leader named Johnny Novak. Johnny fired me after only three arrangements and never even paid me for the third, which he deemed unplayable.