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Today's Featured Biography

Joseph Earles

I finally left Wappingers Falls during the summer of 1999, leaving behind a very pregnant wife (don't worry, I went and picked her up eventually...the baby, too) and starting a lucrative career in Massachusetts with a little company called General Electric. That lucrative career lasted five months. It's all right, though, because over the years I've become quite accustomed to getting laid off (never fired, mind) due to overseas outsourcing or upper-management shenanigans. In fact, I've had five careers so far. Let me show you them.

Radio Deejay - This one came to a halt when I left for college. I tried to resurrect it once but it died a couple years later. Okay. I got fired. I considered it a rite of passage in the broadcasting biz.

Youth Minister (*shudder*) - As Forest Gump would say, that's all I have to say about that.

IT Professional - Lessee... the first job went away because my boss didn't know jack about running a business. When your paychecks start bouncing you know you're in trouble. The second job hopped on a plane to India but not before I was given the privilege of training my replacements (it took an average of three of them to do the job of one hard-working, knowledgeable American with a firm grasp of his clients' native tongue, mostly because we spoke it as a first language). After that I spent six years in two different call centers, each of which closed and left me jobless in an alarmingly similar amount of time, just under three years each.

CSR - This one was a little bit embarrassing. When the IT work dried up, call center #2 was only partly tech support. It was mostly billing and collections calls for a cable TV company whose customers I pitied almost as much as I pitied myself for having to deal with them. You haven't lived until you've sat on the phone listening to a good ol' boy beg you not to turn off his cable and explain that he didn't pay his bill for the last six months on account of he was in jail for most of that time for beatin' on his ex-girlfriend after she caught him in bed with her underage daughter and she done turnt around and set fire to his dog what run around the house yelpin' and settin' fire to his collection of velvet Elvis paintings with his flaming tail or at least that's what the cops said happened but he was too pissed-up drunk to remember much of it.

Teacher - and this one I'm sticking with. I've had enough of the thanklessness of dealing with people in the private sector. At least this way I can help make a difference in people's lives.

Incidentally, three of those careers were accidental. I accidentally got into radio at 17, I accidentally accumulated six years experience in the cable industry and last year I accidentally became a college professor and a substitute teacher. Okay, substitute teacher was more on-purpose than the college gig but still... I've discovered that I not only can teach but also really like teaching as well. I'm finding that I have a real passion for it, one that ranks up there with radio (whodathunkit!). I could definitely do this for the next 25 years and be totally ecstatic. So I guess my idea of a perfect situation would be teaching by day and hitting the airwaves at night. Yes, I'm accident prone. I admit it. In my own defense, though, I can say that the only bullets I've managed to catch have wound up on my Résumé and along the way I've discovered what I want to be if I ever truly grow up...

...I at least have it narrowed down.

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