Mrs. Schmidt grew up in a small community in south-western Colorado. There she attended the same school district from pre-school through high school graduation.

Mrs. Schmidt's love for math was gained by the influence of her parents. Her mother and father would play math games to help her get faster with addition and multiplication facts. Mrs. Schmidt's interest grew when she was able to skip 8th grade math and go directly into Algebra as an eighth grader.

During Middle School, Mrs. Schmidt found two other interests, sports and modeling. Mrs. Schmidt was a cheerleader all three years of middle school along with playing volleyball and basketball. During the non-game weekends, she attended modeling school where she became a certified model.

November of Mrs. Schmidt's high school freshman year, she was in a car accident that lead her to think about what it was that she enjoyed most in life. She found that her love for math and sports were still very strong. Her high school years were filled with basketball, volleyball and track. Her summers were spent at various sport camps or working odd jobs.

Mrs. Schmidt graduated high school, with a class of twenty students, May 16, 1994.

Playing sports benefited Mrs. Schmidt. She became the first female athlete in four years, from her high school, to get a scholarship for a sport.

Mrs. Schmidt attended Colorado Northwestern Community College on a basketball scholarship. It was attending that college that Mrs. Schmidt got her first math tutoring job and really enjoyed it. By having that job, Mrs. Schmidt decided that teaching math was more enjoyable that doing the math herself. She then went taking courses that would help her to attain a teaching degree.

After playing basketball and attending a junior college for two years, Mrs. Schmidt graduated and transferred to a four year school. Making the choice as to which four year school to attend came down to a computer search. By playing junior college basketball, Mrs. Schmidt saw many different states. Colorado will always be her home, but Montana looked real inviting. Mrs. Schmidt did the computer search to see where small schools that offered education degrees were located. The search came up with Rocky Mountain College in Billings, MT.

Mrs. Schmidt attended Rocky Mountain College for four years to earn her teaching degree with minors in mathematics and coaching. She is happy to say that her education classes included many fun and enthusiastic classmates. One classmate, Chris Horn, has been successful in the arena football league and now plays in the NFL.

Mrs. Schmidt graduated May 2000.