Joey Betras

Joey Betras didn't apply to college until May of his senior year. His lack of interest in the college experience quickly turned to the knowledge that he needed to go to school, so with the help of his soccer coach, he enrolled at Wofford College in his hometown of Spartanburg, South Carolina. After a year spent focusing more on his growing passion for audio engineering than on his classes, he transferred to Middle Tennessee State University to study audio production and pursue his new career.

"When I made the decision to go to MTSU, I knew immediately I was driving towards working in a studio somewhere," he said.

At MTSU, Joey devoted most of his time in and out of class working on audio projects. In the summers he lived with his uncle in New York City so he could afford to intern full time for free in recording studios. Following graduation, he spent a year living in Poland before moving to New York City. First, he lived with his grandmother in New Jersey, got a job selling copiers for Toshiba, and interned for free before landing a paid job with a studio. But after nearly two years of working as many as 15 hours a day in the studio, he knew it was time for a career change when he didn't want to listen to music anymore.

"I wanted to just have quiet. I realized that this part of my life that I loved was getting destroyed, so this is probably not the industry to be in. So I quit." Listen to the interview to learn how a job managing bands' MySpace pages led him to pursue software engineering and his current position at Sherpaa, a healthcare startup.

Highlights

What it was like transferring schools: The major feeling was going from not really having a clue how my life is going to turn out to just having a clear and concise idea of exactly what it is that I wanted to do and being kind of comfortable because I know that I'm on the track for that.

Why Joey left audio engineering: I loved the audio production. That was my heart. But that particular studio lifestyle sort of just wrenched it all out of me, squeezed the love out of me. It was particularly grueling hours: about 15 hours a day. My pay was terrible. I think it was probably under minimum wage if you calculated the hours...I got to a point where it was affecting me entirely. I wasn't happy.