Sabrina had been in education since high school, when she started taking education classes. She studied early childhood education at the University of Georgia, studied abroad in Spain, fell in love with it, and went back after graduation to teach English there for two years, to everyone from kids to marketing and hospitality professionals. Back in the US, she taught kindergarten and first grade for three years. She loved it, and she knew there was something out there that fit better.
A coworker who had already found instructional design described it to her.
She joined the Jumpstart workshop, loved it, and started AIDA that November. One week later her apartment caught fire.
"That just turned my whole world upside down. I didn't know how I was gonna finish. That's where the mindset stuff really came through for me."
She finished anyway: every badge, including the electives, which rounded out her portfolio. And in May she made the leap that scares everyone: she resigned without a job lined up, because she knew she wasn't going back.
The thing she credits most isn't a software skill. It's feedback. AIDA's rounds of critique on every sample trained the reflex out of taking it personally, and she used exactly that in interviews.
Her first break came from one LinkedIn connection request. A woman running her own instructional design business looked at Sabrina's profile, loved her portfolio, and asked to interview her. Ten applications in, Sabrina had part-time junior ID work a month after leaving the classroom.
The part-time job carried her while the real search ran long. Her anchor: "I just had to stay positive and remember it only took one job. I just needed the one job." In October she went through four interviews with one organization, got the offer in November, and started in December, a year after joining AIDA: a full-time, fully remote instructional designer at a national nonprofit that provides kids with afterschool and summer learning, building content for both kids and adults. They flew her to Boston to meet the whole organization, everything paid.
Her next step up came through a LinkedIn posting after a focused ten-week search she ran independently: Instructional Designer at Tropical Smoothie Cafe's corporate office in Atlanta, hybrid. Three ID roles in two years, each bigger than the last.
The rest of her life came back with it: three trips planned in a single year, flexible hours her boss doesn't police, time to exercise and cook, unlimited PTO, "which is unheard of in my world." Her cat supervises from beside the laptop.
"I don't have the Sunday scaries anymore."