I thought I should go to New York because it was the place to go to study. I went and tried to get an application from the Juilliard School but they wouldn’t even give me one because I didn’t have my high school graduation.

Forrester recalls an early, formative setback: the belief that serious musical training required going to New York, followed by the blunt gatekeeping of an elite institution. The anecdote highlights how formal credentials can function as barriers even for talented aspirants, especially in fields where ability is not always captured by diplomas. It also underscores a recurring theme in artists’ biographies: ambition meeting bureaucracy, and the need to find alternative routes—private study, local mentors, or professional experience—when conventional pathways are closed. In the broader arc of a successful career, the quote reads as a reminder that rejection by institutions is not the same as rejection of one’s potential.