 Good evening everyone. My journey started about the time I was 11 years old. I just begun seventh grade and up until that point I had been a relatively successful student. Unfortunately I encountered a teacher who did not particularly care for me and began to give me poor marks and just treat me in a generally unkind fashion. For many other reasons my parents decided that I would be homeschooled and so I began my education at 11 to teach myself all the things that most high school students have the opportunity to learn. About the time that I was hearing my 20s I decided that I wanted to be like everyone else and I wanted to earn my GED. So trying to figure out how to do this I found out about Milwaukee Area Technical College and the opportunity that they offered to do so and I did and I obtained it. I was extremely proud of myself and after working for a time in the in the business world I decided that I would serve for two years in Chile doing humanitarian work for my church. And while I was down there I had the opportunity to meet many people who were far less fortunate than I was and I performed service for them for that duration of time and when I came home I decided that I wanted to live a better life but I wanted to give back to my community and I wanted to be a successful individual and thinking about what I wanted to do for school I remembered MATC and the opportunity that they provided me to better myself and they were the only college at the time that was offering a degree in what I was interested in doing which is computer simulation and gaming and I recall that my first time in class there our instructor divided us into groups and asked us what level of experience do we have in the field and I began in the middle of the group and slowly moved my way down having less and less experience than everyone else until I was at the very end of the line this is a very impactful experience for me and they asked what I could offer and I said I can offer my drive and my ambition and so I did and I worked as hard as I possibly could to learn what I needed to and MATC gave me the tools that I needed to the excellent instructors the computer resources and all of the other opportunities that I needed to excel and because of the drive and the help of all those around me I was able to rise up and become a leader in each of my classes despite my lack of ability and experience and with patience and hard work and now the state ambassador for this school I'm the president and founder of our student organization MATC mothership I've worked extremely hard and had the opportunity to work with many fine and wonderful individuals both in the faculty and the students side I've been able to form business partnerships I have many opportunities open to me that would be unavailable without this wonderful system so I'd like to thank everyone from the WTCS system for providing such a wonderful opportunity that anyone can change their stripes and reach for the stars I want to thank Robert W. Barrett and company for providing this wonderful opportunity so that we can understand and realize what progress we have made a common theme that I've noticed in everyone who spoke tonight is it will all face tremendous adversity and we've all overcome it with all of your help and with our drive and ambition I'd also like to thank especially my parents who always supported me and always let me do what I thought was best and I thank everyone here for tonight thank you very much