Miranda Laoise Gillan
23-year-old that is about to be 24
I just like to keep myself busy. Currently, I am taking Steno classes from Plaza College, running for 1st Ward Alderman on the Rensselaer City Common Council, restaurant cooking to sustain myself, and driving people placed that they need to be driven, simply because I feel grateful to have the car that I have.Education
Hudson Valley Community College
Sept 2019 - Dec 2022
Associates in Digital Media
I took classes relating to media, branding, and portfolio development. As creatively empowering as this course was, I realized shortly before graduating that I had both a limited ability and little desire to turn it into a living. The most valuable experience I had at HVCC was managing the weekly student-run newspaper, The Hudsonian. I made sure there were no grammatical or punctuation errors, and that everyone was submitting their articles in time for publication.
Plaza College
August 2024 - Present
Court Reporting Certificate
I came across the field of court reporting entirely on accident. I had applied for a court reporting position in the NYS Unified Court System, and received an e-mail back saying that court reporting was a very niche line of work, and that I would have to go back to school if I wanted to pursue it. I looked into it, found a writer from the early 2000s on eBay with my name on it, and quickly fell in love.
Questar III BOCES - AIT
Sept 2018 - June 2019
CCENT + CCNA certificates
My story here is a bit messy. Because I went to school at Rensselaer High, my schedule for my first year of AIT was backwards. I was supposed to take the afternoon junior class but they put me in the morning senior class anyway. I had no issue getting situated and picked up valuable information anywhere I could. This made my second year in the class a total breeze, helping me end up on the National Technical Honor Society. I recently found an OfficeMax gift card tucked inside my diploma, which probably would have been very useful in my community college days. Alas, that is money that just wasn't meant to be saved. As for the classes themselves, I thoroughly enjoyed them. We spent most of our time in Packet Tracer, learning the ins and outs of how to keep networking equipment up and running. Sometimes we would have days of programming in Java, other times we would be taking apart PCs and putting them back together. We learned Linux, DOS, HTML; anything that the IT field could throw at us. Since then, I have not kept up in this subject due to the myriad of other things I still wanted to learn, but the most important thing to me is that I know I can pick up these sorts of things very easily. As much as technology changes, the fundamentals don't.
Skill Set
Work Experience
Denny's
July 2021 - July 2024
Cook
I cooked, occasionally alone, in a high-volume restaurant. It was probably a necessary workplace experience, but not one that I could maintain after being repeatedly objectified by my coworkers.
MyPlace & CO.
July 2025 -Present
Roller
Another cooking job.
AIT Internships
The week of March 5th 2018, and the week of April 15th, 2019.
Shadowing Intern
Because I took the senior AIT class twice, I have no idea if the junior class had to also take up these internships. My first year internship was at UAlbany's IT department, where I had an absolute blast driving around the capital region and replacing networking equipment. I almost didn't want it to end. My second year internship was at Questar III HQ, which was not as much fun but just as meaningful. There was always a metaphorical fire to be put out, and I vividly remember my last day being marked by a problem that just could not be solved that week. That whole IT course really left me hungry for more, but I never ended up finding a suitable position in the field. I was probably looking in the wrong places.
Portfolio
