 I was first licensed in cosmetology at the age of 17. I'm a child of the 80s where hair was kind of wild, so that was just exciting to me. I'm Melinda Williams. For the past 14 years, I've been running my own salon and teaching cosmetology at Madison Adult Career Center. Okay, what are you gonna do at the time? Some years back, we had an auto plant closed. We had a lot of clients that were transferred out of town. We also had clients that stayed in the area but couldn't afford to get beauty services done. We did lose business, so I thought it's time to shift my gears and do something else. I've always loved computers, so a lot of my colleagues would come to me when they had a question about IT. My school partners with our local community college and my assistant director informed me that they had a grant for the Google IT certificate program. And she thought that I would be interested. Everything I learned was new, everything. I was taking my first bite of the sandwich every time. I learned about security, about infrastructure, how to count in binary. Didn't know that, how to take care of one computer, and then how to take care of a fleet of computers. I didn't feel like, man, this is for people who already know something. It took me step by step. Finding your cause is a critical concept in IT support. Wherever I had my phone, my laptop, I could squeeze in a few minutes of studying. I'd be up in bed with my computer. My husband's like, is it that grueling? I'm like, no, I'm interested. It was like a good book. I wanted to kind of see how that portion was going to end. I completed the Google IT certificate program in five months. Pat myself on the back for that. I got to about the third course and I'm like, you know, I probably could do this for a living. I started to search jobs and earning potential. I had no idea how many jobs there were in IT and they pay very well. For years, I've had multiple jobs. So it would be nice to streamline things and have more time for my family. The world changes, things change. I was cleaning up the other day and I was throwing away old disks from my first computer. You know, those little floppy disks. Nobody used that anymore. But I thought floppy disks were cool back then. So if I weren't a lifelong learner, I'd still be stuck like that floppy disk. I believe it's never too late to go in a new direction. And I think IT is my thing. I think that's going to be my thing.