 I graduated from high school in 2003 and I had been accepted into Winona State University for the fall of 2003. Through some bad decisions throughout that summer and into the fall semester I ended up dropped out of Winona State and into drug treatment. I cleaned myself up and I moved to La Crosse and I entered the workforce working at Cholita Institute where I work with with students who have autism and other emotional or I'm sorry behavioral disabilities. One of the things that I wanted to do when I went back to Western in 2009 was to just gain some technical skills for the field that I was already in and in going back I realized that I wanted to actually do more than that and so I switched out of the program that I started in and I actually switched into the liberal arts program with the desire to advocate for for different groups of people. One of the things that Western has really provided for me is a sense of community and one of the biggest communities that I have at Western is with Phi Theta Kappa the Honor Society. The leadership that I have learned while I've been at Western has just absolutely been tremendous. It has allowed me to go from a direct care staff at Cholita to a supervisor of 60 staff on second shift. So I on top of full-time work in my school in Phi Theta Kappa now I have this new opportunity and I'm just so blessed to have it.