I'm a child of the eighties where here was kind of wild, so that was just exciting to me.

I'm Melinda Williams.

For the past 40 years, I've been running my own salon in teaching cosmetology at Madison Adult Career Center.

Okay, were you gonna do with time?

Some years back, we had an auto plant.

Close way had a lot of clients that were transferred out of Town Way also had clients that stayed in the area but couldn't afford to get beauty.

Service is done way did lose business.

So I thought, it's time to shift gears and do something else.

I've always loved computers So a lot of my colleagues would come to be where they had a question about I t.

My school partners with our local community college and my assistant director and for me that they had a grant for the Google I T certificate program, and she thought that I would be interested.

Everything I learned was knew everything.

I was just taking my first bite of the sandwich every time I learned about security, about infrastructure, how to count the dietary didn't know that how to take care of one computer and then kind of take care of a fleet of computers.

I didn't feel like me.

And this is for people who already know something.

It took me step by step, finding a cause critical concept in I t support.

Wherever I had my phone, my laptop, I could squeeze in a few minutes of studying.

I'll be up in bed with my computer.

My husband's like, Isn't that ruling I'm like, No, I'm interested.

It's like a good book.

I wanted to kind of see how that portion was gonna end.

I completed the Google I T certificate program in five months.

Pat myself on the back.

I got to about the third course, and I'm like, you know, probably could do this for a living.

I started to search jobs and earning potential.

I had no idea how many jobs that were a 19 and they pay very well.

For years I've had multiple jobs, so it will be nice to streamline things and have more time for my family.

World changes, things change.

I was cleaning up the other day and I was throwing away old this from our first computer.

You know, those little floppy this nobody's.

But I thought floppy.

This were cool back then.

So if I weren't a lifelong learner, I'd still be stuck like that.

Floppy disks.

I believe it's never too late to go in a new direction, and I think I t is my thing.