Jessi Peralez
Bachelor of Information Technology degree completion program

Meet Jessi Peralez: The only thing holding her back was herself

A typical teenager, Jessi was bored and rebellious. So much so in fact she even dropped out of high school before she had even completed 10th grade. And then she moved out of her parents' house to work as a nanny.

Today Jessi is hardly recognizable from her teenage self. She buckled down and not only got her GED and vocational training in the travel industry but even her Bachelor's completion degree in Information Technology. And she graduated with her Bachelor's completion degree from AIU Online with a 4.0 grade point average.

"I used to think it was other people blocking me from getting what I wanted and that my failures were someone else's fault; but then I realized it wasn't other people blocking me. I was the one blocking myself. Once I realized and accepted that, it was easy enough to change."

Jessi, the first one in her family to complete her college degree, can trace her realization that she was the one holding herself back to a single encounter. She was in her late-20s and had just started at a Sprint call center in Texas. Jessi was working as a customer service representative (one of the center's lower-level positions) and felt she deserved a promotion because she came to the call center with management experience gained while working in the travel industry. One day, her call center manager pulled Jessi aside. Jessi's manager told her in no uncertain terms that, as long as she was manager, Jessi would never rise to the position of supervisor without a college education. "Education was very important to her."

Although it took Jessi a few years from the day her manager pulled her aside to actually enroll at AIU Online, she thought about it constantly. "I left that talk knowing I had two choices: 1) to never go anywhere and continue on just like I was or 2) to make some tough decisions and sacrifices that would help me move forward. I knew I wanted to move forward, but I had a fear of failing that was keeping me from making the commitment to education. Finally I just did it."

Jessi admits that even after she committed to enrolling, she was still scared. "I had never written a paper in my life and I didn't even know how to write. But I made it through the first session and, after that, realized there was nothing else to fear. I could turn around and see that I had already accomplished something. Once you can see you're doing something, you don't need to fear it anymore because you're already doing it."

Although Jessi ended up moving out of the call center position into another position with Sprint—which she got because she was working towards her Bachelor's completion degree in IT—she has kept in touch with her first manager. "It's funny, when she first pulled me aside and told me that I wouldn't go anywhere without an education, I resented her and I thought she was the one blocking me from getting everything I wanted. But now I see that if we hadn't had that conversation, I wouldn't have gone on with my education. Now we're even friends and I consider her my mentor."

Showing exactly how dedicated she now is to education, Jessi has even started work on her Master's degree. "It used to be that I had all the right ideas but didn't know how to follow them. Now I have the ideas and the direction to know what to do with them. Education is always a good option."

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