"What Went Wrong?" by Until June, Tuesday, May 18, 2021 (Trigger Warning: Depression, Suicide)

Until June was a promising young emo-pop band by the time they released their debut album. The American band had a number one hit in Greece, and their songs were included on many television shows. Their melodic, often airy guitar and piano sounds blended nicely with lead singer Josh Ballard's falsetto vocals. While there were several artists that did falsetto on the radio during that time (i.e. Maroon 5 and James Blunt), Until June's music was more closely akin to fellow Indie Christian rockers like Deas Vail or Copeland and wasn't exactly mainstream for American pop at the time. Still, 2007's self-titled debut album was a like a glass of iced tea on an early summer evening. The band had potential. Their 2012 delayed follow up Young & Foolish was also a fine album, and I apologize that song isn't on Apple Music (I'll substitute for another song from their first album). Their Wikipedia page lacks citations and there is very little information about them around the web. Their Twitter and Facebook went silent by 2014. So, what went wrong?

HOW I LET YOU GO, HOW YOU SLIPPED AWAY? There were two major times in my life that I consider my nadir. Today, I'll talk about one of them. It was at the end of college. I had finished up the course work for my English major and my minors and it was time for me to do my student teaching. My college did two placements for student teaching. They tried to give us one public and one private school teaching spot. On a rare occasion, a teacher would be given a third placement, but we were told to avoid that. A third placement meant you messed up. Student teaching would be the final class before graduations. Up until that point, I had been a pretty solid student, acing most English classes with a few A-'s for the tougher professors. My lowest score was Intermediate Spanish, a B-, but B's were pretty rare for me. I made A's in my education classes and took them seriously. However, when it came to student teaching, something was off. There was the daily work at school and the paperwork and documentation I had to keep up with in the evening. At first I turned in my work on time, but later fell behind. I tried to do the teaching plans first, documentation could wait for the end of the course.

I DREAMT OF SLEEPING IN THE SEA. To make matters worse, I was not good at teaching at that time. I was so nervous of being observed by my professors and my cooperating teacher who held the fate of my teaching license in their hands. About midway through my first placement, my college professor finally observed me. He had been working on his dissertation and hadn't been around much. He confronted me that my teaching was not up to standard and my paperwork that I had turned in was not unsatisfactory. My cooperating teacher agreed and from that point it was very hard to go to school, knowing that I was looking forward to my failure. I lost all confidence in myself and my lessons deteriorated. I came home every day depressed. One day I took a bath and sat in the tub for hours, wishing I could drown. It was the closest I had ever come to contemplating suicide. I had come so close to what I thought was my dream of being a teacher, but I sucked at teaching. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. Fortunately,  I had a few systems in place. I had friends I could reach out to. I had professors (not my advisor) who were concerned about me. They had graded me and they didn't want me to fail. And I had music. Anberlin's Dark Is the Way, Light Is the Place, Relient K's Forget and Not Slow Down and Paper Route's "Better Life." And those songs mixed with my prayers in the car kept me attending. Family over Christmas and a surprisingly uplifting final season of Smallville lifted my spirits over the holidays. After graduation in December, I took a third student teaching position to prove to myself I could do it.

http://www.songlyrics.com/until-june/what-went-wrong-lyrics/