{"id":159,"date":"2018-03-01T18:01:29","date_gmt":"2018-03-01T18:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nctc.mycareerfocus.org\/spring-2018-volume-3-issue-1\/your-career-starts-here-firefighterparamedic\/"},"modified":"2018-03-30T14:56:42","modified_gmt":"2018-03-30T14:56:42","slug":"your-career-starts-here-ashley-stratton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nctc.mycareerfocus.org\/spring-2018-volume-3-issue-1\/your-career-starts-here-ashley-stratton\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Career Starts Here: Ashley Stratton"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4><span style=\"font-family: 'Open Sans Bold';\">Ashley Stratton<br \/>\nFirefighter\/Paramedic, City of Lewisville<\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'Open Sans';\">It took me two years to decide to enroll at NCTC. I lacked confidence, and I didn\u2019t know if I would be able to get a job because of my \u201ccolorful\u201d past.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'Open Sans';\">I started in the EMT\/Paramedic program but experienced the fire service during our ride outs. My heart led me straight into NCTC\u2019s Fire Academy after the paramedic program. As a firefighter you are a part of something extraordinary that has this amazing reputation and immense responsibility. It\u2019s not a regular job; it\u2019s life and death; mediocre doesn\u2019t cut it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: 'Open Sans';\">NCTC\u2019s instructors really went to bat for me. It was not easy to get a job, or even be considered by many departments, because of my earlier mistakes. The letters of recommendation my instructors wrote brought tears to my eyes. They showed that I had taken my studies seriously and worked very hard. I am blessed beyond measure to be where I am right now! NCTC was the best decision I ever made.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ashley Stratton Firefighter\/Paramedic, City of Lewisville It took me two years to decide to enroll at NCTC. I lacked confidence, and I didn\u2019t know if I would be able to get a job because of my \u201ccolorful\u201d past. I started in the EMT\/Paramedic program but experienced the fire service during our ride outs. My heart&#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/nctc.mycareerfocus.org\/spring-2018-volume-3-issue-1\/your-career-starts-here-ashley-stratton\/\">read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"article_type":[],"class_list":["post-159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-success-story","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nctc.mycareerfocus.org\/spring-2018-volume-3-issue-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nctc.mycareerfocus.org\/spring-2018-volume-3-issue-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nctc.mycareerfocus.org\/spring-2018-volume-3-issue-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nctc.mycareerfocus.org\/spring-2018-volume-3-issue-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nctc.mycareerfocus.org\/spring-2018-volume-3-issue-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/nctc.mycareerfocus.org\/spring-2018-volume-3-issue-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":186,"href":"http:\/\/nctc.mycareerfocus.org\/spring-2018-volume-3-issue-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions\/186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nctc.mycareerfocus.org\/spring-2018-volume-3-issue-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nctc.mycareerfocus.org\/spring-2018-volume-3-issue-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nctc.mycareerfocus.org\/spring-2018-volume-3-issue-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nctc.mycareerfocus.org\/spring-2018-volume-3-issue-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159"},{"taxonomy":"article_type","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nctc.mycareerfocus.org\/spring-2018-volume-3-issue-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article_type?post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}