About Me

My name is Alycia Richburg and I am 21 years old.  I currently live in Madison WI with my best friend and her fiance.  I work at the movie theatre and also at Jimmy Johns.  I just graduated from MATC with an associates degree in Meeting and Event Management and plan on attending UW Whitewater in the fall to pursue a bachelors degree in Public Relations with a minor in English.  

For a long time I wanted to be a High School English teacher.  I applied to UW Whitewater in the fall of 2008 and was accepted into their School of Education.  I ended up not attending Whitewater that fall and instead I chose to enroll in Cosmetology School at MATC.  A few weeks into the program I realized that I was not somewhere I wanted to be and I wasn't doing what I loved to do.  I then began taking general classes at MATC in order to give myself time to figure out what exactly it was I wanted to do.  It wasn't easy making the decision to enroll in the Meeting and Event Management Program at MATC, in fact, I almost dropped out of school completely in the spring of 2008.

I knew that dropping out wasn't an option if I wanted to some day have a job that paid me more that $10 an hour so I sat myself down and made a list of the things that I was good at.  I then took my list to one of MATC guidance counselors and asked her what she thought might be a good fit for me.  She immediately told me that I should reconsider going to UW Whitewater for teaching.  In the back of my mind I knew that was something I could do and would enjoy doing but for some reason it didn't sit right with me.  I told her that writing was my passion and I felt that if I was paid for it I wouldn't be able to enjoy it as much as I do.  She disagreed and told me to think about it.  So I did....

The conclusion I came to was that I couldn't allow myself to waste 4 years of my life going to school for something that didn't sit right with me.  I went back to the guidance counselor and informed her of my decision to stay at MATC until I could figure things out.  She then asked me a question that truly changed my life.  "If you could do anything in the world and get paid for it what would you do?"  I then realized what it was I wanted to do.  Event planning had always been something that interested me, I just never thought about being paid for it.  When she informed me that MATC had a program just for that I was ecstatic.  It was as if every bad decision I had made was worth it.  Everything I had done had led me to what it was I was meant to do.  That question truly changed my life.