Morgan taught high school science for eleven years. She was National Board Certified, good at her work, and completely spent. Her position was becoming unsafe, and she had three children at home, all five and under, who were getting whatever energy was left at the end of each day. That was the line for her.
The part of teaching she loved was creating and educating, so instructional design fit. What she had to decide was how to get there. She compared programs, including one a close friend was already in, and picked AIDA for the network and career services. Money was a real obstacle: she took out a private loan on a two-year repayment plan to do it.
"Sometimes you have to make sacrifices up front to look at the long term."
There was no spare time in her life, so she made some. Up at 5 a.m. for a couple hours before school. Course commentary playing in the car. Mock interview recordings on repeat during her own interview prep. Working full time with three little kids, she finished the core program, Rise and Storyline included, in about three months.
"It's not about saying, oh, I don't have the time, or I don't have the money. I see the prize and I'm going to make the time to get it."
This is the part most people never hear honestly. Morgan finished in February and started applying immediately. For eleven weeks: rejection emails and first-round interviews that went nowhere. She submitted 212 applications over 12 weeks and had 13 first interviews.
Then the middle of May hit, and everything came at once. Three job offers in the same window.
She chose Navy Federal Credit Union, a job she found through a hiring manager's LinkedIn post. An AIDA grad already on the team vouched for the quality of her training, which helped carry her application. And because she landed the job before her program roll-off date, her employer repaid the majority of her AIDA loan.
There's a second chapter to Morgan's story, and it's the part that shows the career held up. When her company announced a return to office, the flexibility she'd changed careers for was on the line, so she went back into the market. By December she had secured a new, fully remote instructional design role. This time the search was fast.
Now she blocks off lunch to read to her daughter at preschool on her birthday. When daycare calls (a three-year-old, a bean, a nose), she messages her manager, handles it, and comes back. No sub plans, no coverage, no lost day. And her team is hiring: she's been asked to help find the next instructional designer, and she's looking in the AIDA alumni network.
"I'm a happier person. I have the energy for my kids at the end of the day. It changed my entire mental strength, my whole demeanor. Not just for me, but for my whole family."