A yearbook raises my hope of getting a job in Taylor Swift’s band

After obtaining my MBA at the Tuck School at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in 2003, my family and I moved to Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. My wife and I enrolled our daughter Jennifer at the Wyomissing Area Jr/Sr High School. There, she became classmates with none other than Taylor Swift, who grew up in Wyomissing and was then a student at the school.

I have of course known this fact for many years. But it was only recently that I learned about a crucial piece of information about Jennifer’s association with Swift. That revelation has revived a dream that I have long held.

Swift left Wyomissing Area Jr/Sr High School at the end of eighth grade. She and her family moved to the Nashville area in Tennessee so she could pursue her nascent music career. According to Jennifer, she asked Swift to autograph her copy of their eighth-grade yearbook because she had an intuition that Swift was going to be famous someday. She said Swift graciously obliged.

It would be quite an understatement to say now that Ms. Swift is famous. She has become a megastar whose name is familiar to people in every corner of the world. I was beyond ecstatic when I found out that my daughter has had such a treasured item in our home all these years. I must have come across Ms. Swift’s autograph in that particular yearbook because I have looked through every single one that my kids brought home from their grade school years. But it is obvious now that I had no idea what I was looking at back then.

Those who have read my memoir, The Boy from Boadua, will recall that I was a disc jockey (DJ) during my student days in the Soviet Union. There were foreign students from pretty much every country in the Global South studying at Soviet universities at the time. I was a member of the Ghanaian student association in Donetsk, Ukraine, where I attended university. Nationals from other countries had their own student organizations.

Entertainment options for foreign students in the Soviet Union were scarce so the various student associations organized parties frequently. I volunteered to be the DJ for the Ghanaian student club in Donetsk. A friend of mine who lived in London at the time had a huge collection of albums. During my summer vacations in England in those days, I would always spend hours each week at his apartment recording popular hits onto tapes. I amassed quite a collection of songs and with that, I quickly became a well-known DJ in Donetsk. Other national student associations soon started to invite me to play at their parties.

Few feelings can surpass what we experience as DJs when we play music for crowds and watch people dance their hearts away. My guess is that it is not much different from what musicians feel when they perform at live concerts. After playing at parties numerous times over several years and enjoying it so much, I started harboring thoughts of becoming a professional DJ.

That dream never materialized. But even after all these years, I still get the itch. It is particularly intense whenever I am driving and I listen to a really good song on the radio.

Because of this personal history and that lingering passion, I have wondered at times if it would be possible for me to get some type of job in a band. I don’t play any musical instruments so I’ve always known that being anywhere near a stage, which is where I would really love to be, is a really long shot. Until now.

With this newly discovered family connection, which I have evidence to prove, I think I will have at least a small chance of getting a job in Ms. Swift’s company. I am going to submit an application to Taylor Swift Productions, Inc. One of the skills I will list on my resume is “exceptional ability to carry things on my head.” I have a high level of competency in that from years of carrying large buckets filled with water and walking long distances to and from rivers during my childhood. I will do anything, including carrying bags, to hopefully get an opportunity to be around the stage the next time Ms. Swift goes on a world tour. There is zero chance of any of her instruments getting damaged if I am the one carrying them.

Modesty is a character trait that I greatly admire, but it has downsides at times. If I had known Ms. Swift the way Jennifer did at one point, I would surely bring it up in conversations as frequently as possible. Jennifer almost never does because she favors discretion.

I wish I had known about that autographed yearbook much sooner. Better late than never though. I am keeping hope alive.