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Meet the host: Elyssa
55 Plays1 year ago
Elyssa shares how she discovered her calling for UX design and left the NYC fashion industry behind for corporate life at Verizon.
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Transcript
Introduction and Accessibility Insights
00:00:15
Speaker
Hey, Abby, what's going on with you today? Hey, Alyssa, how are you? Pretty good. I have to share this incredible story, this experience I had at work the other day. We were having our accessibility summit and the panelists came on the screen because we're all doing this virtually these days. And the first panelist goes, hi, my name is Brenda.
00:00:40
Speaker
I'm wearing a red shirt and I am a middle-aged black woman. And then the next panelist goes, hi, I'm Sean and I'm wearing a blue shirt and I have sandy gray hair and I'm a young man. And I just thought,
00:00:55
Speaker
why I can see you and then I thought oh my goodness accessibility not everybody can see and it was a very humbling moment and it also just really reminded me how important it is to surround yourself with diversity. I don't think I've ever worked with somebody who had low visibility or was blind but it was just such a beautiful way to include somebody who
00:01:21
Speaker
I might work within the future that has this disability. So just a very humbling experience and I just really wanted to share that. Absolutely. Um, I've had a few similar situations, uh, at work in the recent past that I can remember. And it's always, it's, it's this sort of like out of body moment, like, Oh, that's what it's like. Um, cause you just, you don't, you don't think about it unless you're,
00:01:49
Speaker
forced to go there. So that's super interesting. But backtrack a little bit more about you talking about your accessibility panel at work.
Alyssa's Career Journey
00:01:59
Speaker
to give a rundown for the viewers on who Alyssa is. Alyssa is a UX designer at Verizon, optimizing checkout clothes for their wireless products. She pivoted or she was defected from the fashion industry, developing apparel for labels in New York City. So welcome, Alyssa. And I would love to hear a little bit about where you came from before you got to where you are now.
00:02:28
Speaker
Yes, so as my bio stated, I started out in fashion. It was a huge dream of mine to be a fashion designer. Growing up in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania, I think it inspired me to just be many different types of characters and experiment with visuals. And it was just kind of a fantasy for me. So I became that. I went to fashion school. I moved to New York City and worked in the fashion industry.
00:02:58
Speaker
And I did that for a little bit. I worked for a lot of really cool labels that people would know their household names. And I got some really amazing experiences. And I can dive in a little bit more as to what made me want to leave the industry or like I say, defect. But that's what I was doing before UX was even really a thing before it even was a college major. That's amazing.
00:03:27
Speaker
There were definitely several points in my life where that was like my dream job to grow up and be. So there's like a younger Abby that is definitely very jealous of that part of your life. And I'm sure, like you said, I'm sure you had a lot of amazing experiences. What made you start to think about looking at different possible careers and what sort of gave you that last push to look at a career pivot?
Challenges in Fashion Industry
00:03:52
Speaker
Yeah, so this process figuring out, well, first of all, after a while, working in fashion is the fashion industry is just very brutal. And I'm sure many people think, well, my industry is brutal. Yeah, it's true. But I felt just for me in fashion, I was working long hours for low pay, I was producing products that nobody really wanted.
00:04:17
Speaker
Fashion just produces way too much stuff in general. There's too many clothes out there.
00:04:23
Speaker
I would work so hard on a style for a couple weeks, months, and just seeing it trampled over at a sample sale marked 80% off. It didn't make me feel very good on top of that. I just didn't feel like I benefited the world. I know that kind of sounds dramatic and I'm not the person that needs to save the world so much, but I just felt manufacturing clothing didn't really
00:04:51
Speaker
benefit the world at all. So I wanted to have a little bit more meaning in my career and I wanted to work on products that people wanted to use or at least were necessary to their lives.
Choosing UX over MBA
00:05:06
Speaker
It took me a while to figure out how to do that. I, for a while thought I wanted to get my MBA because I felt fashion was so niche. I didn't think I had transferable skills elsewhere. So I thought, oh, MBA, just a do over stamp, which I quickly realized is not the case. MBAs are an education of all kinds. It's not
00:05:30
Speaker
a ticket to what you want, it's a tool to use and figure out how to get what you want. But the NBA really made me, those admissions essays are no joke, they really made me hammer out exactly what I wanted. So knowing that I wanted to work on products that were a bit more meaningful in people's lives and also make a little bit more money was important to me.
00:06:00
Speaker
So I decided that the NBA for many reasons wasn't right for me and I'm still happy that I made that decision to this day. I avoided a lot of debt. So I just started, you know,
00:06:16
Speaker
becoming a sponge, learning what other people were doing in their lives. I was seeing my peers. I was on a swim team in the city at the time, and I was luckily around a bunch of really interesting and smart people in different careers than me. I just started to talk to people. What do they do? How do they get to where they are?
00:06:40
Speaker
I eventually met somebody who was a project manager, and I was just telling him how over-fashioned I was. And he was honestly kind of my first mentor in a way. He really was able to help me figure out how my skills could transfer into project management, which I agreed. So I thought I wanted to do project management. I actually did that for a little bit in interior design.
00:07:10
Speaker
I thought those job skills would translate better to tech, because tech just seemed like the better industry to work in for project management. I was very wrong. I had no idea what Asana was. I had no idea really what HTML meant, which thinking back, I was very naive. But I then realized, well, if I'm not going to get these skills on the job,
00:07:38
Speaker
I'll just teach them to myself. So I downloaded Asana. What's Asana? It's not that hard to use. I figured out what HTML is. I just started noodling around and I thought, well, what if I taught myself how to build websites?
Discovering UX as True Path
00:07:53
Speaker
nothing to lose. There's so many free resources out there. And then that's kind of when I discovered UX, I found this video online of an ideation session. And I loved how people were pulling different ideas for an MVP and distilling the different
00:08:10
Speaker
options that could go into a product. And I thought, oh my gosh, like in fashion, people just design what they think is their vision and complain when people don't want to buy it. But here they're actually figuring out what the customer wants. So and also an ideation session, which I went to go on to learn is my favorite part of the UX process.
00:08:33
Speaker
So I was UX design. What's UX design? How did I become a UX designer? I finally had found it. I finally fell down the correct rabbit hole. And that's when I realized that that was the career path I wanted to go on. That's awesome. I love how you talk about
00:08:53
Speaker
seeing someone in this new career path and being intrigued and sort of having a moment where you think to yourself, I think that's what I want to do because I feel like a lot of people who are maybe unhappy or not totally fulfilled with their current job
00:09:11
Speaker
have had many of those moments where they look at someone else in another position and they say, that's what I really want to do. But I think what happens a lot is when you try to immediately put yourself in that other position, it doesn't always fit exactly in a little bit of like a square peg in a round hole. And that doesn't mean that it's totally wrong for you. That just means that
00:09:32
Speaker
you need to tailor that situation a little bit more to yourself. So it sounds like that's exactly what you did. You were able to see a path you wanted to go, but you did need to tailor it to your own life and your own preferences. And it's so important that I think folks ready themselves to have to continue that journey of fine tuning what they want to become. So you found UX.
00:09:59
Speaker
When you decided UX was your path, how did you find out about Springboard? What made you take the plunge to do UX with Springboard?
UX Training during Pandemic
00:10:12
Speaker
Springboard wasn't the first thing I came across when I was looking into UX. I actually, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I thought bootcamps were a scam.
00:10:23
Speaker
back before I really knew anything about using a bootcamp to get into the tech industry. And it was very because I build myself as someone who can talk to most people about most things. And I was talking to somebody and he happened to be somehow connected to
00:10:47
Speaker
founder or someone that was pretty high up at one of the bigger boot camps in the US. And I brought up to him and I thought, oh, are people really getting those kinds of salaries out of these boot camps? And he said very seriously, yeah, they are. And I did a double take. And
00:11:08
Speaker
when I think this conversation happened before I discovered UX. But when you put that in my head, I forget the exact order of events, but when
00:11:21
Speaker
I realized that the bootcamp could be a viable option. I started to do a lot more research on that. I looked into how people got into UX in general, and I really saw a lot of people did do bootcamps. Some people did masters, some people taught themselves. I knew I was someone that needed a bit of structure, so the teaching myself route was not going to happen.
00:11:45
Speaker
For a master's, I really felt that that was overkill. I would have spent so much more money, spent so much more time learning something that the boot camp could teach me. I also found that my experience in fashion design, I felt comparing that to my two UX job specs.
00:12:09
Speaker
I had about 60% of overlapping skills. I really just needed the hard skill set. I needed the vocabulary. I needed the portfolio to get to where I wanted to go. And I originally applied to another bootcamp.
00:12:24
Speaker
But that didn't work out because they ended their program for whatever reason, and Springboard came about. Again, I really wanted an in-person experience because, again, I'm a people person. I like networking. I like making connections.
00:12:41
Speaker
But I was looking at all of this in May of 2020, and we all know what was happening in May of 2020. So I was really stuck in a sense of, do I wait for in-person classes to come back? Or here's springboard where I can start next month and proceed?
00:13:05
Speaker
And I didn't know what was going to happen in the world and I'm really glad I didn't wait because I think we all know what happened. And I decided Springboard, it really did have a good pitch with the mentorship. I like that it was self-paced because I would get that one-on-one attention and the career coaching really spoke to me.
00:13:29
Speaker
I took the plunge and enrolled in springboard and I'm very happy to say, don't regret it. That's awesome. And I love how you preferred an in-person bootcamp because I think a lot of people do. I would have, there's just something about that human connection and just the community around you gives you, I would anticipate gives you confidence to complete a bootcamp.
00:13:59
Speaker
As you mentioned, um, and this is something that I've reflected on from my own experience with springboard is it may have actually been a blessing that I went to an online bootcamp because so much of my career and everything that I do for data science and machine learning
00:14:19
Speaker
is now completely online. And it was not only a fast track course in the industry I wanted to pivot to, but also in just how to effectively communicate and organize yourself with this new online world. I work completely remotely, so it is just a very different pace. Are you remote, hybrid, or how do you work these days?
Mentorship and Networking
00:14:45
Speaker
I am 100% remote. I could go into our office and we have had some in-office days, which are a lot of fun, but there's no requirement for me to go into the office. That's fantastic. We can talk a little bit more about
00:15:02
Speaker
the pros and cons of remote work in a little bit. But first I want to hear more about your experience doing an online bootcamp. Obviously there are things that can be really challenging. There are also things that can be really rewarding. What was your experience like?
00:15:17
Speaker
I would say my mentor and I clicked really well. I told him in the very beginning, I said, I'm getting a job out of this. This is it. So please be difficult with me. And he was, he did exactly what I told him to do. And there were some challenging times because he really pushed me, but I appreciate it. He was very wise. And so I was really grateful to have just someone to talk to. Unlike when you had that,
00:15:47
Speaker
teacher and classroom situation, they can't give you that kind of attention. I also would say the career coaches were phenomenal working in fashion.
00:15:57
Speaker
And pretty much any job I ever had, I had a micromanager manager. So I really didn't feel very confident owning a lot of my work. And when I shared that with my career coach, he said, you were still there doing the work and contributing to it. So who cares if someone was telling you what to do versus you making the decisions and.
00:16:22
Speaker
it really helped reshape my perspective of how I contribute to a team. And luckily I'm on a team where I'm not micromanaged and I am allowed to have an opinion. So, you know, things do work out, but I would say those two things really stuck out to me on top of just learning everything there is to know about UX.
00:16:41
Speaker
It would be interesting to go back and quantify exactly what percentage of the course I applied to my job now, but it was incredibly thorough. I would honestly say it prepared me more than my undergraduate degree. That's amazing. I think that's, it's really interesting
00:17:03
Speaker
that you say you wonder how much, what percentage of the course you would actually apply to your job today. Because you never really know until you get that job what that job is going to be. So you sort of have to prepare for a whole lot of different situations and be proficient in the general track. And later you can specialize, which it sounds like you have done. But even taking from your previous experiences
00:17:33
Speaker
I'm sure there must have been a lot of parallels with fashion that you, transferable skills that you were able to bring over to your new path. What would you say were some of those things that you were able to bring over from fashion? Sure, there are definitely a couple things. I would say just having the design eye and being able to under, it's hard to say and I'm sure someone who's really design centric could
00:18:02
Speaker
say this more eloquently than me, but being able to look at a garment or an interface, there's certain things you have to look out for that
00:18:12
Speaker
need to be in place for things to look pleasant. So I think I came in knowing that I would have to train my eye for user interfaces, which is a little bit different than fashion, where fashion can be a little bit more frivolous. And because I said so, the button's going there or whatnot. But with a user interface, things have to function. And you can't just put a CTA in an ironic spot.
00:18:40
Speaker
So things like that, transferring those skills over. One skill that I didn't use so much in my bootcamp, but knowing how to break from perfect practice, I think helped set me apart from other
00:18:57
Speaker
junior UXers, I know in fashion that just because you design a garment one way doesn't mean that the factory can produce it exactly that way or the fabric will work out or when you put that in production, it will cost or be costed effectively, things like that. So I knew in UX, and actually I did work on it with my mentor on this a lot,
00:19:24
Speaker
If I design something, I was constantly asking like, if this were in production or if this were going to a developer, how might they look at her? What might be a pitfall here? Just because I wanted to prepare myself for that, I knew that would be an issue going into the industry. So I think those two skills really helped on more of just getting that first job, which I know we'll get to later.
00:19:48
Speaker
I think breaking into fashion is incredibly difficult. So when I was reading even before getting into a bootcamp, getting into UX was difficult. I thought, well, I broke into fashion during a not so good economy years ago. I think I can do this in UX during a pandemic. I don't know what that says about me, but I just knew that
00:20:16
Speaker
especially with the extra years of experience and the extra years of maturity that I've gained in life, that I would be able to break into UX. Okay. And I kind of knew the tricks to get that. Yeah. I sometimes think about, you know, when I was able to break into tech part of me thinks I was just super naive to think it wouldn't be super hard. And the other part of me thinks I've just like, I knew it was going to be hard, but I had the self-confidence that whatever it took, I was just going to do it. Um, and it sounds like you've had a similar.
00:20:47
Speaker
sort of attitude there. But it's great to hear that, you know, after all that, you obviously have succeeded. So once you finished the springboard curriculum, or outside of the springboard curriculum, were there other things that you felt that you needed to go learn on your own or maybe experiences that you had to acquire that weren't part of the course?
00:21:13
Speaker
I would say the biggest thing that helped me was networking. I used the platform Lunch Club to connect with people in the industry. You are taught to cold email people on LinkedIn to tap your current network. However, I loved Lunch Club because
00:21:32
Speaker
you sign up. It's kind of like a dating app for professionals. They match you with one-on-one meetings with people of like mine. So I met a lot of people who their words exactly where I was in your shoes two, three, six years ago and now I'm a senior UX designer doing whatever. And
00:21:56
Speaker
That was really helpful. I was able to just ask them about their story, compile all the data to determine what worked for them, take the average of that and see how that could work for me. And I got amazing insight into what to expect, what to make sure I really understood. One person said to me,
00:22:24
Speaker
make sure you understand the UX design process. That needs to be on the back of your hand before you even interview, which makes sense. I mean, but I think a lot of people just kind of don't understand what
00:22:40
Speaker
is expected of you in your first role. And I feel like he was telling me that because he probably has experienced a lot of junior UX designers who just didn't get the process, which it takes some people longer than others, but that really stuck out to me. And the other bit of advice I got from a guy, he, I know we don't wanna make anything political, but it was a good reference. He was saying, try to be Obama, don't make everything perfect, just make it better.
00:23:09
Speaker
Take with that what you want, but that was a really good bit of advice and something I've carried on to my career is you're always going to have to make some concessions, but really advocate for what matters in the end, but understand things that can be cut out when necessary. Totally. A phrase I love is don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
00:23:34
Speaker
Totally. So, okay, so you've finished the program. Now you're starting in the job search process.
Job Search and Success at Verizon
00:23:43
Speaker
What were some of the challenges you faced? How did you attack the job search? And maybe I know everyone has very different stories about
00:23:56
Speaker
how many applications they had to send out or cold calls, cold emails they had to make to try to get that first job. What was your experience like? Yeah, so I went a little beyond what Springboard requires. So Springboard, because you sign the job guarantee, you're required to
00:24:18
Speaker
apply to a certain amount of jobs a week and network with a certain amount of people for a week. But I was doing two, three times that I wanted to leave no stone unturned. I was lucky in the sense that I was able to focus a lot of my time on the job hunt. My income at the time was working freelance in fashion, so I was able to do things
00:24:45
Speaker
I was able to do work on my own time and I would wake up every day and just a mass apply on LinkedIn. My biggest tip would be if you're meeting people who work at companies,
00:24:59
Speaker
Add them on LinkedIn. Never ask somebody for a job right away. Do not do that. But if you see a job later after you have talked to them, there's no harm in saying, hey, Abby, I see that there's a position open at your company.
00:25:18
Speaker
you know, would you know of anyone I could talk to about it? Or, you know, if it was someone I knew well enough, I'd ask if they'd be comfortable giving me the referral code. And I got a lot of interviews that way at some companies that we all here would know. And
00:25:36
Speaker
I was getting, I think it took me about two and a half months to get a job offer, the one I have at Verizon. And I would say that first month I got really nothing, but then I was really searching in July and I kid you not after the 4th of July to like
00:25:58
Speaker
End of September, I had an interview with a recruiter or a company almost every day. The day I had my interview at Verizon, I had two other interviews. It was exhausting. I would say in the job hunt, just keep your head up. You're going to get a lot of rejection.
00:26:21
Speaker
But make some time for yourself. I definitely sacrifice myself a little bit. Take an hour to go for a run or spend time with friends. You're not a failure because you've done that. That's what I thought. But I really needed a job. And also, sometimes the right job might kind of find you. What I think is so funny looking back is
00:26:48
Speaker
Verizon was a recruiter reached out to me and I looked at the job spec. I actually felt I matched a lot of what they were saying in the job spec. The only thing that I didn't match was six to eight years of experience, which I didn't have that in UX, but I had prior job experience and I was at the point where I really just didn't care.
00:27:14
Speaker
If they emailed me, I'm going to respond. So I did. And then I talked to them and they said, okay, we're going to submit you. And I thought, great. Okay. Exciting. Verizon is a great company, I'm sure. And then I had the interview with the manager and that was it. I didn't, he did look at my portfolio, but I didn't have a whiteboard and challenge. And then a little bit later I got the offer. So.
00:27:41
Speaker
If I want to be silly about it, I could have just sat and did nothing and Verizon could have found me. I didn't have to apply to 20 jobs a day. It's true, but you never know. Yeah, I obviously didn't have a crystal ball to know, but it's just kind of funny that I literally could have sat and did nothing and Verizon would have just found me. But yes, that is how I got my job. That's awesome. So it sounds like you, I mean, I know it can be super discouraging.
00:28:12
Speaker
Going through the job applications and a lot of times I hear folks talking about either, you know, they get a lot of rejection letters or just know nothing back at all which can be sometimes even more
00:28:26
Speaker
demotivating because you just don't even know what's going on. But it sounds like you're really able to keep your head up and at least keep yourself enough motivated to keep trying, which is awesome. Do you have any advice for maybe someone going through the process who is just having a really hard time keeping up the pace?
00:28:45
Speaker
Yeah, I would be interested in learning why people are having a tough time, and I don't say that to sound rude, but I think people have different reasons as to why they're struggling. Sometimes the work is just not there. It's very clear when you're looking at a portfolio if they don't understand the UX process, and I'm not saying I'm some savant, but
00:29:09
Speaker
if you have a clear understanding and lay out a case study, that will get you way farther. I also think some people just don't have the transferable skills.
00:29:19
Speaker
They probably need to intern for a bit and get a little bit more credibility that way. Then there's also just the job market and luck. Like I think I had a lot of luck on my side because I was applying during that big boom in hiring. I would be, I don't want to find out, but it would be very interesting to compare what my portfolio was now to getting a job to back then. So.
00:29:49
Speaker
I really just think it's that. Constantly ask questions. Keep getting your portfolio in front of people. Keep telling people your story. And I think you're going to start to hear the same things over and over again.
00:30:05
Speaker
So that's where you'll know to hone in on whether it's fine tuning your work or maybe you're not giving the best interview answers or maybe you just need to re-up your strategy. Not everybody gets hired through a recruiter or through LinkedIn. I always say if something's not working out for you, what you're doing is probably not working. So
00:30:30
Speaker
One of my favorite quotes is, if you want to change your life, you got to change yourself. So if something is not getting you hired, yes, of course, there's the economy to think about. However, what are you putting out into this world? Because at the end of the day, people do get jobs. And it's not to say that you're not hireable, but maybe there's just another, you got to shake up your strategy. Sure. Sure.
00:30:59
Speaker
The definition of insanity is trying the same thing multiple times, expecting different results. So obviously, there is a certain amount of persistence, and there is a certain amount of just pure numbers gain to it all. But I think it's also really important to reflect on the process, iterate, repeat, and keep changing things along the way, which it sounds like you were doing. And also, that's a true UX quality. Yeah.
00:31:29
Speaker
probably getting very granular, but I feel like UX isn't just a job you have, it's a way of life. And if you're not applying some of those core principles, such as how you go about your life, then I wonder how that's gonna work in your job. Absolutely, yeah. And it's also just a very good life skill in general to have.
00:31:58
Speaker
Which is great. So it sounds like you were applying for a couple
Initial Challenges at Verizon
00:32:04
Speaker
months. You found your job at Verizon. Once you started working at Verizon, what proportion of the skills needed on day one were skills that you felt very prepared by Springboard? And how much did you have to either acquire on the job or figure out on your own time?
00:32:24
Speaker
Yeah, I would say as far as just the general practice of UX, I was very prepared. That being said, you know, Verizon's a challenging company to work for. There's a lot of really complex problems. So, you know, I'm not just sitting around designing a recipe app, which you do in boot camps, I'm working on very complex
00:32:47
Speaker
user flows on implementing promos and having people pick plans. And it's not about just making a pretty interface. I think the biggest challenge that I face at Verizon
00:33:04
Speaker
is making everything legally compliant. That was one thing Springboard did not teach you was how to work with lawyers. And granted, it's not that hard at Verizon, but that is one extra stakeholder I didn't anticipate, though it makes sense. And a lot of times what our lawyers want doesn't make for a pretty interface. And
00:33:27
Speaker
That's been a very unique challenge. I would say also working on big enterprise at a big enterprise company, we're not just designing out user flows like you would in a bootcamp. You're honing in on very specific parts of
00:33:47
Speaker
the interface, things that you probably wouldn't have thought of in your bootcamp. But that makes it exciting to me. I can't always discuss what I'm working on. But right now, I'm actually working on a part of our sales flow that is a very common part of UI, and just really getting granular on how it affects our sales flows.
00:34:13
Speaker
maybe in a couple of weeks I'll have some answers, but it's really cool to get that nitty gritty. But as far as what Springboard did, I felt like I was over prepared. Like I don't work on animations. I have a team that researches. I have teams that compile data for us and present it. So it is kind of nice getting to focus in on very granular parts of the experience.
00:34:41
Speaker
Yeah, and I guess that sort of touches back on what we were talking about earlier, that it's often good to at least have a basic generalizability for the field. And then you'll start to specialize once you get a little bit more in the weeds. But I also loved hearing about how there were certain things you just never would have anticipated, like working with lawyers, which I mean, until you do it, you never, you wouldn't know.
00:35:12
Speaker
And I guess to draw a parallel with some of my own experiences, I know it can also be really tricky starting at a new job because you just have to learn about their processes and procedures and their infrastructure and their systems. And that in and of itself can be a task that no bootcamp can teach you. You just have to learn when you get there. So now you've been working at Verizon for a while.
Future Goals and Learning
00:35:39
Speaker
What is next for Alyssa?
00:35:42
Speaker
Yes, that's a great question. I had in my head in a year or two years, I figured out exactly why I wanted to specialize in my niche because there's riches niche, there's riches and niches, however you want to say it.
00:35:57
Speaker
And I still haven't figured that out, which is kind of frustrating to me because I gave myself a timeline. And, you know, I've been kind of grinding in my head, like, you know, figure it out, Alyssa, figure it out. But then I realized, wait, I've been here before. I've been in that position of what do I want to do? And luckily this time around, I know that I like UX. I know this is what I want to work in for the rest of my life. Well, career, I do want to retire one day. And
00:36:26
Speaker
I know that I really am happy at Verizon. It's a great company to work for and it's kind of rare that I think you can say everybody I've worked with has it been baseline at least fine. If they're not fine, they're great.
00:36:43
Speaker
I definitely want to stay at Verizon for a while because there's so much to learn there. But I've given myself a bit of grace in that I don't have to figure out exactly what I want to be doing right this second. And I'm just going to be a sponge. Whatever Verizon, whatever my boss wants me to do, I'm just going to do it. And I'm going to learn and it's going to be great. And I think I will get to that point of
00:37:08
Speaker
Oh my God, UX. How do I become a UX designer? I'm going to get to that at the next stage of my career. So it worked off the first time. I'm sure it'll work out this time. And that's a great attitude to have, you know, because you never know exactly what's going to happen. But as long as you just keep pushing forward, you can make anyone can make it work, I think, with enough luck and persistence. Was there anything else you wanted to cover? Only that I'm so excited to interview you next.
00:37:36
Speaker
I'm so excited for this podcast and I'm just more than excited to be here and also share other Springboard alumni stories. Yeah, there's a lot of really fantastic guests lined up with totally different and unique stories, but they all seem to have some common threads that I think a lot of folks will be able to relate to.
00:38:00
Speaker
I think so too. I just, in talking to people who aren't even UX grads, I relate to them and I hope that other people can find just some connection within the stories we're gonna share. Thank you so much, Alyssa. It was great hearing about your story. If any of the listeners have any questions for Alyssa or myself, you can email them in at alumnipodcast at springboard.com. We look forward to sharing more stories with you.