You can never rely on musicians. I quit high school at one point to make a go of it with this band and we kept breaking up. So I went back to school.
Both my mother and father were very supportive of any career move any of us wanted to make.
I'm a freak, everything has to be totally flat when I play. Ed Will, my jazz teacher, set up everything completely flat, and then you'd tilt your snare drum away from you, so I do that too. So my snare tilts away from me.