After high school I attended a college in my home country Nairobi, Kenya where I earned an equivalent of an American Associates Degree in Computer Hardware Maintenance. A couple years later, I came to the United States to further my education and I changed my career path to health care (as most of my family members and friends were doing and had advised me). I worked in the health care industry for five years. I liked it but deep down I knew it wasn’t the career path for me.
Last year in 2012 I decided to go back to college and finish what I hd started. I was living in Florida and tried to find an accelerated IT program, but I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for. I researched online and checked schools in New Jersey and PC Age Career Institute immediately caught my attention with their program in Internetwork Engineering. I immediately made plans and moved to New Jersey within a month and enrolled in August 2012.
It hasn’t been an easy course, but with hard work and perseverance, I was able to always score high in almost all my tests with an average GPA of 3.85 and certifications from CompTIA and Microsoft. Also being the only female in most of my classes was challenging but that did not stop or slow me down. I knew I had to do this for myself.
A couple months before my graduation, I started working with Career Services at PC Age and this department has the most amazing individuals at this school. I was privileged to work with Ms. Nadia and Ms. Michele from fixing my resume, learning interview skills and job placement. Ms. Nadia and Ms. Michele were relentlessly in working with me in job placement, forwarding my resume to many companies, and sending me job openings for me to apply and get job interviews. My breakthrough came after Ms. Michele was able to get me into an interview with Verizon. I was among hundreds of candidates that did their entry exams and I passed. If it wasn’t for the training I got from PC Age Career Institute, I would not have been among the very few candidates that passed. Two weeks before my graduation, I got a very good job offer with great benefits to work at Verizon as a Help Desk Support Technician. I would recommend PC Age Career Institute as a Mom and a wife holding a part time job, I did it and so can you.
Thank you to all that made this happen, especially my instructors, Mr. Mohammed and Mr. Jorge Fleites, and Career Services Ms. Nadia and Ms. Michele, and Mr. Humberto for your professionalism and support.