Hi, I'm Alison I'm from South Haven, Mississippi. I'm a medical office manager, and I've been doing this for about a dozen years. It is not my passion by any means, but it's something that a career I kind of fell into, stumbled into, and I was pretty good at it. But my dream job is writing and proofreading, both of which I used to do in my earlier years. I used to freelance writing articles and editing articles for a local magazine until they closed up shop. And I always wanted to do that again, but I didn't really know how to market myself, or how to find the jobs that were out there.

In June of this year, right before my birthday, I saw an ad on social media for Proofread Anywhere, and I was immediately intrigued. I was also skeptical. I watched the intro video, I took notes, and compared it to another course that I was looking at as well. But I had never taken any course online before. And I was just so nervous about it being a scam. I searched all over the internet. I was looking for any kind of reviews, positive, negative. I found lots of positive reviews, but the negative reviews I dug into those and it really just looked like to me, these were people that didn't apply themselves or maybe not cut out to be proofreaders to begin with. And yes, you do need to have a love for the written word and be pretty much a grammar nerd. And Caitlin tells you this in the very beginning.

I jumped on that free five day course. I took notes like it was my first day in college. I don't remember if I bought the course before I started the free one, or if it was after the first day or so, but it was pretty early on. I did decide to do that pretty quickly. I had decided I was going to invest in myself and I told my husband, I had bought my own birthday gift and he didn't have to go shopping for me because I bought the course. I even bought a domain on day four of the free course. Probably shouldn't do that. I changed my mind about the name of my business, so that domain is kind of going to waste, but that's just how excited I was.

Once I started the full course I dove in, I did about four modules in just a couple of days in my spare time. And that's saying a lot, because I spend about 60 hours a week traveling, commuting, and working at my day job. And that's just how much I was ready to soak up the course. I felt pretty good about sprinting through those first few modules. The Facebook group is amazing. It made me feel in good company. I lurked in there. I gleaned some good information and some tips, and I started contributing some myself.
I don't remember if it was in the Facebook group or in the course itself, but I remember Caitlin talking about the difference between perfection and excellence, and that was pretty much my aha moment. I had been getting frustrated with not being perfect with the essays and I really appreciated that grace that allowed me to still be excellent and be good at what I was doing.

This will make a lot of sense when you get ready to take the exam. The bar is set high for the exam, but it's achievable if you study and you're ready. I continued with the course working on it on my weekends, and vacation, and any spare time, any moment that I could find, because once you hit the essays, there's really no more sprinting. I was getting Caitlin's blogs in my email, I was feeling encouraged. I was ready to grow and expand. I bought a writing book and I signed up for a writing course, and I signed up for a writing challenge. And this was all because I was getting confidence through Proofread Anywhere and its community.

I graduated from Proofread Anywhere a few weeks ago when I got to the part about the website and became overwhelmed. I almost hired it out, but I really didn't want to drop any more cash before I made some money on this endeavor. And so, what a Proofread Anywhere graduate does, they keep learning. So I figured it out. Isn't the internet a wonderful thing? And that's where I am right now. I'm laying the groundwork, finishing up some other courses, and planning to be busy enough with my passion to make it my full-time income. I would absolutely recommend this course if you love words, and proofreading, I have gained so much more than a proofreading course. It's a community, an education. Seriously. Do they even teach some of this stuff up in college? It's also an escape from your daily grind if you go into a job somewhere. If you're on the brink and you come this far just to research whether this might be the course for you, you probably just needed to push that little button on your mouse and just go ahead and sign of the course. You won't regret it. Bye.