Transcript – Summit Gave Me More Than A Career: Angel Morris

ANGEL MORRIS: My name is Angel Morris and I graduated from Summit from the service desk technician program and I now work at Atomic Data as a service desk Level 1 technician.

I was a foster kid. So I grew up with not many, you know, of the things that a lot of people have, you know, maybe a consistent house, home — Positive parental figures — Siblings, whatever it may be. Or, way too many. You know, whatever.

And I know that people come from all sorts of backgrounds and, I guess, my background kind of held me back and made me think: “You can’t do this.” Because, plenty of people had told me that I couldn’t.

I don’t know. Summit, really I feel like, is an opportunity for anyone. It doesn’t matter who you are, what your background is— You can come from a rich family, a poor family — It doesn’t matter. There’s a place here at Summit for everyone. And I truly, truly believe that because they’ve shown it to me.

When I was growing up, I used to always love you know, playing with the computer, adding files — like just doing weird little stuff. I didn’t really know quite how to work it, or what I was doing but it was kind of fun.

I know that there’s a lot of other students who have done a lot more with it. So, it’s kind of cool because I get to, you know, compare and contrast some of the stuff that they learned as kids with what I learned when I was a kid.

The teachers — I’ve really learned a lot from them, like, as a person. Mr. Schwahn, personally, is always like: “Confidence, Angel, confidence!” You know, I feel like he’s trying to teach me more self-confidence this, during this course than anything else.

But the teachers… I’ve never, in all my education experience, I’ve never quite encountered professors that care so much about their students. You know, if you’re out for a day they’re going to come and say “Hey, is everything going okay?”

A normal school, you miss a day and they don’t even send you the assignment, you know? So, it’s definitely… they’re very caring. Very… you know that they’re here to help you succeed.

Before coming to Summit, I wouldn’t have… I don’t know. I guess I was kind of… lost. I didn’t — I knew I couldn’t afford college. Didn’t have the time to work full-time and pay my rent and go to school. So that just wasn’t an option for me.

So coming to Summit, you know, with it being a shorter program and having such engaging staff—

It’s very empowering. I — There’s no doubt in my mind that when I’m done with this j—, I mean, with this schooling I’m going to have a good job. Not even a good job — I will have a career.

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One of them, one of our clients is like, certain salons. So we help them, you know, if their internet goes down, sometimes people call in with Outlook issues, password resets. Sometimes there’s bigger issues. Maybe a server is down, maybe, there’s a network outage in the area — Something like that.

Then, so, if those calls come in I would just basically help get those to the right people. But, a lot of the stuff I can do. You know, the Outlook resets and stuff like that. So that’s pretty fun.

I definitely like the calls from the salons because I almost always know how to get it, and they’re always panicking. So they’re like: “Oh my gosh, the Internet’s out. I don’t know what to do.” Or: “Our credit card terminal isn’t working.” And I almost always know how to fix it.

So they’re always super appreciative. And, I don’t know, that — that feeling that I get when they’re: “Thank you so much!” You know, I just clicked a couple of buttons but, you know, it really made a difference in their day. So, I think those are my favorite by far.

Because I am an African-American woman, I have a lot more avenues. Because there is not a lot of us. So, I think that my ambition and my dedication is going to take me far.

And I think that, if you, if you want to be in IT, go for it. Because we can always use people.

You know, IT is a growing field. It’s, it’s not going anywhere. With A.I. you know, all these, all these new avenues for, you know, technology. You know, there’s just an abundance of positions and, you know, things. So, what you necessarily think IT is probably isn’t what it is.

There’s so many more things. So if you think you’ll like it, you probably will. And you should just go for it.

Ultimately, I think just my confidence and all this positive energy and mindset for myself has really changed a lot. And I think I gained that at Summit.

I don’t think that I just decided one day to be positive. I think that, you know, 20 weeks of someone yelling: “Confidence, young lady!” It’s really ingrained into my brain. It’s a way I think. It’s my way of life now.

That’s huge. So, thank you Summit.