 Hello, everyone. I'm Martin Pierce. First, I'd like to thank R. W. Berg for the generous scholarship and for this event. It's been fantastic, a really great experience overall. My story really starts back in 1984 when I was born. I was born in Milwaukee and I was born into an underprivileged family where, you know, didn't grow up very much. And there came a time when my mom decided to make that change and she returned to college. It took 12 years raising two children and overcoming a lot of obstacles, as we all know. But she did it. And now she has a master's degree. She is a practicing therapist and she's just really, really touched my heart and really shown me the way on how to do all of this. So she's not able to be here, but thank you, mom. It was one year ago today that I was working a dead-end job and feeling trapped, unfulfilled. I wasn't really going anywhere. I wasn't happy. And I knew that something had to change or I was going to be on that same path my whole life. And that's when I chose to go to Waukesha County Technical College and having been out of high school for 10 years, it was a bit of a challenge for me to break back in and get back into my group. And with the Technical College, I knew that it was practical. They could offer a hands-on real life experience that I could take and get employment with. So with everything that WCTC has provided, I know I've made the right choice. I know this has been a fantastic start for me, even though it's been less than a year that I just started. I've achieved a much higher level of confidence and that's been instilled in me through my instructors, through administrators, everyone that I've worked with at the campus. I was able to choose a specific major that directly correlated to the job that I wanted to do, which was really important to me. The broad spectrum really had me confused, so I was really, really happy to be able to specify what I wanted to do and be able to apply that. The warm, welcoming, fun environment that Waukesha County Technical College has provided is what was able to make me grow and become more of a confident person. I have to give a very, very, very special thank you to Dr. Susan Fenspie, who really got me started going at the college and gave me more of the motivation and courage to know that I could do it and really pushed me to gain as much experience and as much as I could from the experience overall. So thank you so much Susan, very much appreciated. I'm extremely grateful to everyone at Waukesha County so far. Everything's been fantastic and I know that I now have a new future for myself, just as my mother did. So I'm extremely grateful to everything that the college has provided and thank you very much for coming tonight.