 As a child he " hoped to be a musician or a hockey player . " At Main Street Elementary School , with the encouragement of his teacher James Doyle , he developed an interest in writing , serving as editor for his school newspaper . He graduated from West Springfield High School in 1974 , having been voted " Most Likely Not to Live Up to Potential " by his classmates , and dropped out of Holyoke Community College after one day , undecided about what he wanted to do with his life . He took up work in the clothing department at Steiger 's department store , as a janitor at the Baystate Medical Center and also as a driving instructor . He commented : " I think if I had actually succeeded at college and gotten a degree in accounting or something , I might have given up too quickly on writing . Having no marketable job skills was a tremendous incentive to keep trying to succeed as a writer . " He realized " there probably wasn 't going to be a career in riding around with my friends listening to Foghat , " so Scully decided he " definitely wanted to break into comedy " even though he " really had no reason to believe [ he ] could succeed . " Regardless , he moved to Los Angeles , California in 1982 . 
