My name is Andrew Richardson.
I was a corporal in the United States Marine Corps infantry
and now I'm a service engineer in Microsoft.
One of the things I found most valuable about
the Marine Corps was the sense of self-value,
and there is a certain confidence that comes out of that.
I'd finished my second deployment
about a year before I was getting out.
I didn't really think a lot about
what I was gonna be doing when I got out.
I just kind of thought that I would find a job
because I'm a Marine and life was gonna be easy,
and come to find out that's not really the case, you know.
You're now a 22 year old kid
that can hardly relate to anybody in the real world.
You have zero real world experience,
so it's a tough transition definitely.
So I was working at this place.
I was bartending there.
I didn't feel like I was contributing at all to society,
to myself, to family, and this couple walks in
and sit down at the bar, and come to find out
that the man that I was talking to was a Navy veteran,
so I shared with him that I was a Marine veteran
and he told me what he does for a living
and how he focuses on military affairs for Microsoft.
So he gave he his card and said,
"You know, you should really check out this program
called MSSA and it's this tech program
veterans and current military members can go to."
I had this sense that my life
had just changed in that one moment,
so I went ahead and contacted the course
down in Camp Pendleton.
I actually ended up getting a phone call about a week later
saying that a spot had opened up.
I quit my job, moved down to California a couple days later
and I started the course.
People are scared to be in the Marines, you know,
but Marines are scared to be a civilian,
and having gone back to base
and kind of reconnecting with some fellow Marines,
it was kind of like a healing process for me.
To be honest, I was a bit better when I had gotten out
because I felt life wasn't becoming
what I thought it was in my mind,
and realized that I kind of saw myself
in some of these Marines who were about to get out
about having that same attitude of,
"Oh, you know, I'll figure it out,"
and then I was able to take my experience
and share it with them and say,
"Hey, you know, life isn't as easy as you think it is.
You need to have a plan.
You need to be serious about this program,
because this could change your life."
I'd always had a passion for math growing up
and when I started this course,
I quickly noticed that there was a connection between
you know, writing code, programming, and math,
so as military members,
we have leadership and organizational skills.
Through the help of MSSA, they kind of bridge the gap
and help you leverage those skills
to make you more successful in the tech industry.
It can be scary, daunting,
thinking about being a civilian again.
If you have an interest in technology,
if you have an interest in, you know,
being a part of something bigger, being a part of Microsoft,
if you're getting exposure, you know,
try to, you know, apply to the course
and do the work and get in.
Now I have Microsoft on my resume
and it's an immediate stamp of approval, you know,
and you can kind of go anywhere and do anything
and it's life-changing and it's kind of up from here,
which, you know, hasn't always seemed that way.
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