MJ Life Update: Mid Crash Out

Hello Awakened Anesthetist Community! I'm baaack for a sec. This episode was recorded September 25th, 2026 and I was mid crash out from beginning my Doctorate in Healthcare Education. This doctorate is AMAZING, but totally sending me into an existential crisis. I love hearing about others' messy middle of the growth process, and it wouldn't be Awakened Anesthetist Podcast if I didn't share mine too. Hope this comforts and inspires anyone in the midst of their own uplevel. 

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Hear my PROCESS of becoming

• ep. 9 Part 1/3 https://www.buzzsprout.com/1219709/episodes/10057284
• ep. 37 Part 1/3 https://www.buzzsprout.com/1219709/episodes/13680889

Hear one of my Expanders PROCESS ep. 70 Yulanda Greene

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 1:40

Welcome to the Awakened Anesthetist Podcast, the first podcast to highlight the CAA experience. I'm your host, Mary Jean, and I've been a certified anesthesiologist assistant for close to two decades. Throughout my journey and struggles, I've searched for guidance that includes my unique perspective as a CAA. At one of my lowest points, I decided to turn my passion for storytelling and my belief that the CAA profession is uniquely able to create a life by design into a podcast. If you are a practicing CAA, current AA student, or someone who hopes to be one, I encourage you to stick around and experience the power of being in a community filled with voices who sound like yours, sharing experiences you never believed possible. I know you will find yourself here at the Awakened Anesthetist Podcast. Welcome in. Hello, Awakened Anestis Community. Welcome back to the Awaken Anestus Podcast, the first podcast ever created for the CAA experience, for our community to tell our stories. I am a certified anesthesiologist assistant and I have been since 2008. So upcoming on 20 years, when I was rethinking my career, you know, starting in 2017. I had been working full-time for almost a decade, and I just really wanted something different, but I didn't see anything different modeled around me. And so I set off to find stories and influences and mentors and people who had what I wanted, but felt like they understood where I was coming from. And I didn't find that. I never found the CAA community or the CAA experience, my experience, reflected in, you know, what at that time was like personal development and chasing your dreams and living a fulfilled life. And so I decided uh I love storytelling, I love hearing people's stories, probably first and foremost. And so I just decided to start asking people about themselves and their stories, and one thing led to another, and now we are here. I have had this podcast for five seasons since 2021. So the beginning of this spring, 2026, I announced that I was starting a doctorate in healthcare education here in my community in Kansas City, Missouri. It's a local college, and I had decided to put some other aspects, some other things I love, like the podcast on the back burner, in order to have more time, more focus, more white space. It wasn't that I couldn't do it all, it's that I wanted to live slower, has always been one of my intentions, and to have some white space to do this full-time EDD, this doctorate program. Newsflash, I'm here, so I haven't gone anywhere. Um, so all that to say is that my draw to speak to you all, speak to this community, to continue to connect in this way, to continue to collect stories has not gone away. That desire is still here, and it has brought me um a couple places. One is that I am about to record an interview with a current AA student. I know this student very well, and she is really in the thick of things, and so she offered to share her story really bravely and boldly, and so I'm about to collect that. And then since I put makeup on and got my podcasting shirt on, I decided to share also a life update because I am only in this doctorate of healthcare education program because a few specific CAAs who have been on this podcast or have been connected to me through this podcast told me that they were getting their EDD or had their EDD and allowed me to see to believe that it's something that I could do as well, that's something I wanted to do. Um, it showed me what doors could be opened when I furthered my education in this way. Um, and specifically, I want to name Yolanda Green, who's at Emory actually, and also Cassie Langhalls, who is the current program director of South Orlando. Those two CAAs, among many, many others, Carrie Twitchell is another one that comes to mind. Those three women now have received their EDD and really showed me it was possible. And so I know that coming on in the midst, in the very beginning, I'm in week five of my own doctorate and sharing my journey so far is really important for everyone else before me and everyone else after me who is not even specifically thinking about going back to get their doctorate, but maybe is thinking of doing something new, something different as a CAA, or maybe you're trying to get into the CAA profession. Like I know so many amazing pre-AAs are trying to do, and you want to see what maybe your future could look like or feel like, and also you want some reassurance that you're doing nothing wrong if it feels really hard and really uncomfortable. So that's why I wanted to get on today. And let's see, where should I start? I guess, how are you? I hope I hope you're doing well. That was a lot about me. I wish you were really on the other end of this so you could tell me how you're doing and maybe what your life is up to right now. I know I have pre-AAs who are listening who are maybe in the application process or the interview process, AA students, you're maybe listening to me as you're switching rotations, driving to who knows where for how long, and then CAAs, my colleagues who have been doing this for one year or doing this for 20 years and looking for the type of community that I was searching for when I was a practicing CAA. So maybe let me know. I guess there is a way in the show notes to text me. You can also leave me a voice note in the show notes, which actually I would prefer that. I love voice noting back. It's so much easier than my like big old thumbs trying to text you back. But since I can't really hear from you right now, I guess I'll go on just to share that I am in week five of a two-year plus, hopefully two-year only, if I can continue full-time through this doctorate. It is a doctorate in educational leadership. And then I had the opportunity to pick one of three specialty areas: organizational leadership, K through 12, or healthcare education. Those are three tracks. And uh eventually, I think maybe semester three, I start getting into the healthcare education of it all. The classes that I'm taking right now are more general education, doctorate level classes, which I'm loving. It's so, it's so expansive. Like my brain is like, whoa, whoa, I didn't know that this was all going on behind the scenes in the education process. So it's an all-online, I don't know that I said that. It's a completely online program. It is some live classes and some asynchronous classes, a lot of online discussion. We use Canvas to track all of our modules and all of our assignments. Um, there's a research, a big research element in the third semester through the sixth semester, which is one of the main reasons why I picked this program and specifically why I picked an EDD rather than a PhD, particularly in education. An EDD is more focused on clinical implementation of your educational principles, and a PhD is more focused on research. And that seems confusing because I'm about to tell you that I picked this EDD because of the research opportunities that I will have available to me and open, um, like open my eyes to through this program. But it's research that I can do that then informs clinical experience. Um, and that can mean oh so many things. So I'm really, really, really excited, and I'm loving my my educators, my teachers. And so, although it's online, I went on the first day of school. You might have seen on my socials, I went on the first day of school with my two girls, my daughter Eliza, who right now is 11, and my daughter Amelia, who's eight. And we got my picture taken, I got my student ID. I got a meal plan, people. I got a commuter's meal plan because I wanted to walk on campus. I wanted to use the library, I wanted to take advantage of like their fun nights and whatnot. Um, I'm just that sort of person to really go all in. And so it was really, really fun. And so far, I have been on campus every week, maybe two or three times a week, and going to the library, using their printers, you know, just I feel like I'm a 40-year-old, it's most an undergraduate college. So I feel like that's me and the undergraduates. And it's just really fun. I'm having a great time, and also because I'm local, I have taken advantage of my teacher's office hours and like they're meant to be Zoom, but I'm like, hey, I'm local, can I come in and meet you? And they're just so gracious, and they put so much effort into each of us, and especially I feel like I'm getting a lot, you know, big, big bang for my buck. So I'm just really excited. And the other thing going on alongside that excitement is I have been feeling extremely uncertain about my own personal future. And let me just be a little more, I don't know, give you a little bit more details on that. If you are totally new to this podcast, you have seen me go from talking about not necessarily financial freedom, but there was a aspect of that, but it was um using the CAA career to live your life by design. That was really the focus of my life as well as this podcast, probably seasons one through four. And then during the fifth season, which was all of last year, I really achieved all of the goals that I set out for myself the years past. I was working a day a week at an institution that valued me but let me pick my days. And I felt totally in control of my schedule. I still got to precept students, but I was no longer teaching at the local AA program here. I was getting to travel and speak. I spoke on our national stage several years in a row at the Quad A conference. I was getting to interact with anesthesiologists or other physicians who are into the well-being sphere and also creating impact through education and education specifically around emotional intelligence. And then I kind of started talking about the art of anesthesia and how emotional intelligence is basically the art of anesthesia just in action. It's emotional intelligence in action in the operating room. I was able to start the Quad A Professional Wellness Committee, which was a year and a half process of many years before that, of thinking we need this, I want this, but then actually doing the paperwork and the proposals that it took to petition is the word I keep using, the quad A to start this or to to grant the permission to start this committee, the Professional Wellness Committee, which started January 2026. And you know, so I've like pivoted here and I started my EDD thinking, okay, what I'm gonna do with this is get the credentials and the skills behind my name to educate inside AA schools, inside master level programs that are often in medical schools, medical institutions. And credentials matter a lot in those institutions. And so I went back to school thinking, okay, I'm gonna get this power behind my name, and then this sort of outside the box thing I want to do, which is to teach emotional wellness and the art of anesthesia, like to teach it directly, not just to assume students are gonna absorb it through osmosis during their clinical phase. I'm gonna teach it directly and I'm gonna prove that it's worthwhile and prove through research, through this doctorate, that what I'm saying actually has substance and I'm not just spouting feel goods here. And wouldn't you know that even just week three, I'm in week five now again, and at week three, I'm like, is that what I want to do? I'm not, I it that doesn't feel right anymore. And I have entered this phase, which actually my preceptor, not my preceptors, my that's my that's our word, my teachers, their um doctorates themselves, they are telling me, you know, this this curriculum, this doctorate of education curriculum is meant to reveal what your path is as you go along. That very often what you come in thinking you're interested in or researching or like I want to use it for this, that often changes. And so they're like, what you're in is the cognitive dissonance of education, like my own education, meaning the more you know, the more you realize you don't know or you thought you knew, but it's actually looks this way. And I keep saying um also that I'm seeing how the sausage gets made, which uh maybe is unsettling to think about, but I'm just I'm seeing behind the curtain of education and I'm seeing everything that's back there, and you know, on multiple levels, like the federal level, we're learning about all sorts of federal federal regulations, and then at the bureaucratic, like at the institutional level. So for CAAs, that would be kind of at the medical school, and then at the program level, at the curriculum level, and it's just really changed what I thought I wanted to do. I seen the money behind all of it. Like there's so much money that is kind of calling the shots in higher education. There's so much politics that's calling the shots in education, and I am now seeing how that all inf affects how CIAs are educated or our opportunities. And it's just deeply unsettling. It is really, really made me question if I want to stay. I mean, I'm just gonna be really blatant and blunt because this is my podcast, and it's it's it's fine. If you were with me in real life, I'd tell you, like, I'm really questioning like, do I want to stay and educate inside the AA profession? You know, which could mean pre-AAs, AA students specifically, or like faculty, AA faculty or even clinical preceptors. I I'm interested in all of that. Like, I thought I was interested in all of that. And now recently, for the first time ever, I'm like, do I want to be a high school teacher? Do I want to teach sixth grade? Do I want to teach maybe those immersion high school healthcare tracks you can get into when you're like a senior and you know, considering healthcare in your future? Is that where I want to make my impact? And man, for someone who really wants to know what this is all for and where I'm going, and I want to see the ROI. And I'm I'm so passionate and so excited about teaching. Like I'm excited to teach. I'm excited to be a better teacher than I hope I already am, and to have more skills and to meet new people and to be just like wowed by what's possible. And some of the things I'm seeing and learning in higher education are just a little um upsetting. Like they're not exactly what I thought it was gonna look like, right? I mean, the same is true probably for everything. Probably corporate life is like this. We know medicine's like this, we know the operating room culture. It it should be all about patient care and at that at the highest. But there's a whole lot of other stuff that's going on behind the drapes, behind the OR doors, that is really unsettling, you know, if you look too closely, kind of at it, which is what I'm doing right now. And it's like it feels like such a big problem. And it's like, how am I this one person gonna make the difference I wanna make if I'm pushing a boulder uphill? And there's all these metaphors that I've been using to tell people how I'm feeling. But it's hard to put a fine point on because it's just I'm all jumbled up. And so I really want to show what it's like to be reaching or trying new things. That's one of the things I love about this podcast, is I don't want to hear just everyone's end story, like the wow part. I want to hear about the messy middle. And so this is the messy middle of getting more education, making a career change, not having expectations meet reality, but still knowing I'm meant somewhere in here. I this is my realm, but I'm not sure where exactly I'm meant to be within it. And I had thought I hadn't known exactly, and so it's so, so uncomfortable. And yet I'm gonna choose to stay. And what I have done to make staying easier is um one of the big ones was I got off social media, which I'm on Instagram mostly, um, under Awakened Anesthetist. I started Instagram way back, maybe I don't know, maybe seven or eight years ago with my hot fudge company, which listen to my process episodes at the beginning of this podcast to hear how hot fudge plays a part of my role or in my story. But I had a hot fudge, love hot fudge uh business, started Instagram for that, but now I've bridged into LinkedIn with Awaken Anestes, and I also started on TikTok because I've been teaching within the pre-AA community these emotional intelligence skills. I've been showing pre-AAs through um a program I'm running and still running called Interview Prep. So um preparing pre-AAs for their AA school interview, which is really that that interview is all trying to see do you have the interpersonal skills, the emotional intelligence, the self-awareness to be an AA student? And so I'm showing pre-AAs how to show that, how through storytelling, largely and reflecting on where you've been, do you tell a program director who's asking you at an interview, like, how do you know that you're gonna be able to be successful in AA school? And so I'm deeply passionate about all of that, but all of that networking and all of that marketing, honestly, happened on social media. And so I was finding myself numbing a lot on social media because I'm so uncomfortable where I'm at in this doctorate journey that I just was, you know, despite my best efforts, after 9 p.m., when my brain is tired, my body's tired, I make one small wrong decision and flip open my phone, and then all of a sudden I'm like doing this till midnight. And, you know, then it makes the cycle repeat itself because then I'm not refreshed in the morning. And so then I open my phone while I'm drinking my coffee and I'm like doing this instead of my journaling or meditating or all the other things that really helped ground me and clear me in the morning. And so I was like, that I just can't. I just can't, I'm too weak right now. I am too sensitive, I am too in too much upheaval that I needed to get off social media to avoid the temptation. I'm just an all or nothing person, unfortunately. It's just my personality, and so now I'm missing out on the engagement, the community, um, the networking. As I said, I'm the chair of the Quad A's Professional Wellness Committee. And we just had our first webinar this week. I'm recording this on Friday. We had it on Tuesday, and it was amazing. It went so well. And I would have normally been on social media really talking it up and talking about how it felt and showing behind the scenes and thanking people and you know, all that networking sort of outreach stuff. And I did none of it, and it's like that's a loss. I really I missed out. I could have probably built a stronger wellness community within that moment that you know would have then reaped dividends later on, and I missed that chance. And it's just I have to know that there will be other chances. This is not like a um a zero-sum game, meaning like it's not one winner, one moment, and that's it. Like, there's constantly gonna be future opportunities, especially if I'm as interested and passionate as I am right now, and that losing something now is more important than risking missing the moment, risking numbing myself on social media, risking the loss of the quiet time to process all of this uncertainty, all of this discomfort. And it's like, great, well, what I'm giving up is something that could have been really good. And what I'm doing is sitting instead, for me, meditating in the morning with these really uncomfortable feelings. Like, why would I choose that? But I know that that's the way through discomfort is you have to sit with it, you have to go through it. And, you know, I'm also doing things like reach reaching out to mentors. Shout out Cassie, who I just spoke with this morning. I am telling people I'm uncomfortable, hence this podcast. I also like kind of made a big big stink about leaving socials and kind of told all my connections on social media and made a post that, like, hey, I'm leaving and this is why, and just showing myself to people has. Allowed this to feel more purposeful, more intentional, and also for me to stay intentional about like I need to use this time. If I'm losing, if I'm giving up, if I am not making connections, I'm not marketing, I'm not selling, like part of part of this is a business as well. Like I'm selling interview prep school. And if I'm not online talking about it, if sales go down, like that's has to be okay because what I'm gaining is slowness, is clarity, is white space to figure out what's meant for me. And and I need a lot of quiet because oftentimes I have to hear myself know what's meant for me. I'm very easily excitable with things that are um, you know, sound fun or sound good. Like I'm I'm talking about in like an education space or in the CAA space. Like I can get swept up in, you know, the the latest state legislation process, or um like right now everyone is talking about the exam, like the scandal, the national exam scandal. Like I can kind of get caught up in that and like want to respond and wanna, you know, in with the best of intentions, but it's like that takes away from what my brain really is meant to do right now, which is to grow and expand, and I'm in the discomfort of it, and I just gotta sit there. So if you also are maybe applying to AA school or you're in AA school or you're considering a job transition or a schedule transition, and you're in a really uncomfortable spot, you're not alone. This is normal. This is also cyclic. Like I've been here before. That's probably also why I kind of know more of what I need, is because I've done it wrong. I've been in this position and I've done it wrong before. And then it's, you know, delayed clarity or it's extended the discomfort. Also, to say I have obsessive-compulsive disorder and I have always lived my life with a lot of uncertainty and discomfort. And so I have tools specific to me because of my type of anxiety to help me move through that discomfort. So I have a lot of practice, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And I know this is what I need to do. And if you're not sure what you need to do right now, reach out. You have to talk to someone. You have to really crowdsource for ideas amongst the people you trust. Maybe that's one person, maybe that's two people, maybe that's your program director, or your academic advisor if you're a pre-AA or your parents. You know, someone needs to know that you're uncomfortable, that you're struggling. And I promise it feels like it's the thing that's gonna make it worse, but it doesn't. It makes it better to share that discomfort and also to have support. And you might just need a buddy there with you to go through it, the discomfort together with you. So, all of that to say, if you want to connect more with the work I'm doing here at Awakened Anesthetist, you could probably find me best via email. So that is connect at awakenanest.com. You can also go on my website, awakenedanest.com, and find my booking link to book some time with me. I have a free 10-minute AMA and ask me anything, which people have been using actually since I got off social. I've noticed um several more of you have booked that just to kind of talk very plainly about um something for 10 minutes and field some questions there. I'm just I'm really open to connecting. I just am not capable of connecting on socials right now. So connect at awakenedanestis.com or find any other information you need along with all of the back episodes of this podcast at awakenedanest.com. All right, talk soon, y'all.