I'm originally from Wisconsin. I was born and raised there and moved to Arizona when I turned 18. I met my husband at a very young age and we got married at a young age. I got married when I was 20.

And just because of the situation that we were in, immediately I just went to work. I started working retail, and I worked retail for, I think like, nine or ten years and decided I couldn't do nights and weekends anymore. On the holidays, I never saw my family.

So I switched into banking. I spent nine years with the company. I worked my way up from teller all the way to an administrative assistant. And I was just feeling really unfulfilled. I realized that I needed to put myself first and I needed to do something that made me happy, and that I enjoy.

And that's what led me to Lambda School and web development. It you know, it's kind of tough cause I was 36. And thinking about going back to school. And that can be scary. You know, I had been out of school for 18 years.

Coming into Lambda I, I was this, this newbie who knew absolutely nothing about code and it taught me a lot about how I can overcome personal struggles. It taught me that you can't always be a perfectionist, and things aren't always going to go your way. But that's okay. You just, learn from it, you move on and I feel like I'm definitely a stronger person because it forced me outside of my comfort zone.

You can't just kind of stay stagnant while at school, because it isn't an easy ride. I just learned like what my limits were, and you know, not gonna lie, there were days that I wanted to cry.

But I regrouped, told myself, "hey, this is what you want to do. You made this choice, you can do it." And I just figured things out and kept going. It kind of humbled me and forced myself to regroup and rebuild myself as a person.

I just recently graduated from Lambda School as part of their web development program, and recently got hired at United Healthcare as a technology development associate.