He was turned down twice by the SUNY Purchase Film Conservatory. As a result, the accepted film students nick-named him "The Wannabe Film Student" just to mock him. While still attending as a liberal arts major, he took filmmaking classes outside of the Film Conservatory curriculum and made his own projects. The film students (one of them being his roommate) often saw him shooting video on campus and yelled out to him, telling him to give it up. He was hired as a freelancer at JHD Productions that following summer and then at NBC four years later.