Hi. I am Lisa Ellis. I found the Proofread Anywhere class about four years ago, and I have been working full-time ever since then as a proofreader for court reporters all over the U.S., but most of my reporters are located in California and in Texas.

When I was younger, right out of high school, I married my high school sweetheart. We moved to North Carolina where he was in the Marine Corps, and I immediately got pregnant and had one child.

Then we quickly got pregnant again, and I decided I wanted to stay home with the kids. I loved being a parent and just, just to have my boys at home. And at the time, it was a huge sacrifice financially.

We did not have much money. But I just wanted to spend time with them and just be able to be home and do that. And so we did it, and it was hard. And so when I found this, you know, about four-and-a-half years ago, I was so excited. I quickly worked through the program because I was very determined and excited.

I use the graduate page on Facebook frequently just to reassure myself, if nothing else, of whatever weird situations you find in transcripts, because you're looking at -- you're looking at people's spoken word as opposed to their written word. And so you're finding all kinds of different kinds of sentence structure than you maybe normally would.

So it's kind of fun. It's like a puzzle to me. I really enjoy it. And you get to see into, like, this window into all these different situations in these various trials or depos or whatever type of work you're working on, or you learn! I've learned all kinds of crazy things from experts and different trials; it seems like I've learned a lot about aircrafts for whatever reason.

Sometimes the material is really challenging to read, but you have the freedom to accept what you want to accept or don't, if you don't want to. And that's the same with your schedule. You can take what you want, or if you can't, you can tell your reporter you're unable to do it that time.

You can use your friends on the graduate page or whoever. And that's been a huge blessing because if you can't do one, then somebody else probably can take it. And it's just really, really great to be able to work around your schedule, do how much you want to do, make how much you want to make.

If you want to work really, really hard for a while, there is the work out there. There really is. And especially if you do a good job, I mean, you really do have to be reliable. You have to be loyal, and you have to try. You can't go into this halfway; this is a job, and this is important. This is reflecting on these reporters.

This is their work, and it's important to them and it should be, obviously. And so you need to take pride in your work as well. And so it's a blessing to be able to contribute to that. And it feels good, especially for someone who has stayed at home for so long to be able to say I'm working again and that I'm contributing financially to our household.

That is a blessing for me. And it's such a weird culture. I mean, it's been four years and I still, when I get paid, I'm like, this is so weird to get paid for this. It's so awesome. And I'm so excited and I'm like, we got paid and I can go get things as I need them. And it's just so awesome.

I do have a huge family. I have nine children. So you can do this around your schedule, like I said, with that many kids; with whatever crazy life you had, I doubt very many of you have as many kids as I do, but maybe. Possibly. Anyway, I just want to say it has been the best experience.

And it's just so, so, so satisfying and such a reward to have accomplished this. I am so thankful. And like I said, I have a degree, but I really haven't been able to use that in the traditional fashion as a teacher, and I'm just so incredibly thankful to have found this. It's been such a blessing, so thankful.