Alumni Spotlight: Carrie Driver
Sep 30, 2024With B.A. in hand, Carrie Driver starts new career with associate degree
WENTWORTH – Carrie Driver is a brand-new graduate of Rockingham Community College, earning an Associate in Applied Science degree in Medical Office Administration (MOA), along with a Medical Office Professional Certificate, in May.
RCC was not Driver’s first foray into higher education. She had already earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History, Criticism and Conservation from UNC-Charlotte in 2008.
“I would have to go get my doctorate to actually use my bachelor’s degree,” she said.
When she started a family with her husband Paul, Driver stopped working to stay home because of the high cost of daycare. Their two boys, Jackson and PJ, are now almost 6 and 7 years old.
“But I am not a homebody. We moved to Browns Summit and I decided to go back to school,” she said. “Covid had just hit, and I talked to my mother-in-law who has been a nurse for well over 25 years.”
Medical coding sounded interesting to Driver, and she applied to RCC.
Betty Archer, MOA faculty and program coordinator, was assigned as Driver’s advisor.
“She asked what my final goal was. I told her I enjoy staying home and being with my boys when they get home from school,” she said.
While on the surface a B.A. in Art History seems like the polar opposite of medical claims and coding, Driver said that’s not the case.
“With art history, you have to be meticulous because you have to know names – the place, the medium, the title, and the artist. With coding, there are no gray areas. It’s black and white,” she said. “But it was hard to switch. I still appreciate art and I wanted to teach it, but the college programs are hard to get into.”
At RCC, she only had to pay for her books, because scholarships covered everything else.
“I was also able to fund almost my entire education at RCC with scholarships that I qualified for because I had to pay for everything on my own due to having a bachelor’s previously. This took a burden off of my family, and I was able to succeed in all of my classes because of that,” she said.
Driver was able to apply many of her college credits from UNC-Charlotte to her RCC pre-requisites, cutting down her number of classes. She took most of them online, except for her last two. And she told Archer she wanted to take her coding classes at the very end because her level of concentration isn’t what it used to be.
“I had a car accident in 2009, and had a severe traumatic brain injury and a lacerated spleen,” she said.
Driver was on her way home from a Spears YMCA job in Greensboro, when she ran off the road in a curve. Her mom, with whom she lived, was in the Outer Banks for a funeral.
She laid in her overturned vehicle overnight, and was found the next day when firefighters heard her phone ringing.
“They gave me a 20% chance. I don’t remember any of it. I was 26, and they told my parents that I would have the intellect of a 13-year-old. I would probably live in a home for the rest of my life and I would probably never have children,” she said. “The thing is, the brain is something they don’t know a lot about. Mine was a global brain injury, so it wasn’t in one particular spot. But I basically made a complete recovery.”
She remembers waking up and having to learn how to do everything again.
What helped Driver recover was that she was in excellent shape. She had done a triathlon weeks before the accident. She swam six days a week, and had worked at several YMCAs and the Greensboro Aquatic Center.
“I’m a fighter. When my doctors tell me I can’t do something, they’re going to be wrong,” she said.
And boy did she prove them wrong.
Not only did Driver finish RCC with a 3.9 grade-point average, she landed a job a month before she even graduated.
She works as a medical claims examiner for UMR, a third party that handles UnitedHealth Group claims for big corporations and government. She had to undergo seven weeks of training, mainly to learn UMR’s system. And she works from home.
“The reason that I can do my job is because of the classes I took. I wish I had known this 20 years ago in high school,” she said. “I’m making more money now than I ever have. I’m making more money with an associate degree than I was with a bachelor’s degree.”
Handling claims has gotten her foot in the door, but Driver wants to get more into coding. She may get that chance, as UMR is good about promoting from within.
She said attending RCC has been one of her best experiences, and she hopes everyone can have that kind of experience.
Driver said she stopped at RCC’s James Library because she needed a hotspot to connect to the internet. She had her restless boys with her, but the library employee was very understanding and accommodating.
“Universities could really learn something from community colleges because I have never in my life felt like a person and not just a number. Anybody I emailed at RCC was so helpful. They treated me like family. I truly felt like I mattered,” she said.
“I’m going to send my boys to RCC. I was just so impressed. Whatever y’all are doing, you’re doing right. RCC needs to have a training program to teach people how to treat people,” Driver said.
“I am using what RCC taught me, and working as a 100% remote claims specialist. That means I can still be home with my boys. So thank you from the bottom of my heart,” she said. “I have your school, and your staff to thank for that. RCC has truly given me what higher education should, the skills to provide for myself and my family.”
By Gerri Hunt, RCC Director of Public Information
