Some of you knew as early as medical school or residency that clinical medicine wasn’t really the best for you. But everyone says, keep your head down, slog through, and everything will get better. Or, some of you had major life events (illness, injury, babies, COVID…) that made you rethink your career and priorities. If either of these sound familiar, listen to hear an inspirational story of career transition from doctor to university professor in this interview with Dr. Jennifer Wortendyke.
In this episode of The Career Rx we’ll discuss:
- A real world example of transitioning from clinical to academics
- The pros and cons of becoming a professor
- How to assess your career goals and personal priorities
Today’s interview is one of inspiration and courage. Follow along as Dr. Wortendyke details her career transition story from anesthesiologist to undergraduate anatomy professor. We discuss the defining moments that made this change one of necessity and a response to the changing world of medical professionals.
In this Episode:
[2:50] Meet our guest – Dr. Jennifer Wortendyke
[23:20] The importance of healthcare professionals in all areas
[34:35] Salary, schedule, and other key considerations
[37:00] Additional degrees and certifications
Please note: the information and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the guest speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the host, nor any of the host’s affiliated entities.
Links and Resources:
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TRANSCRIPT: Episode 115 – Anesthesiologist to Undergrad Anatomy Professor – with Dr. Jennifer Wortendyke
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the show. As you know, I love a good career transition story, something that will I know leave you inspired, and leave you really feeling like anything is possible because my guest today really has made a dramatic change in her career. And I think you’ll agree that is really doing something to shape the minds and the lives and inspire the next generation of healthcare professionals. It’s really cool.
Before I welcome her to the show, and she tells her story, I want to remind all of you that if you are thinking about a career transition, a career pivot, please do come check out my course Industry Insider. Although I designed it to help people make a transition from clinical medicine to the pharmaceutical or biotech industry, the principles in it really apply pretty much any career move that you’d like to make, especially ones where you really have no idea where to even begin.
And my guest today had a similar type story, not really sure what she wanted to do, or how to be able to do it. So today on the show, I’m so excited to have my guest, Dr. Jennifer Wortendyke, who is an anesthesiologist, who now teaches college anatomy and physiology as a career. And that’s quite a change.
That’s really exciting. Jennifer, I came across, I think, a post of yours in a Facebook group, and it just piqued my interest so much. I was so delighted when you responded that, yeah, you’d be happy to come on the show and tell your story. So thank you for being here. Welcome.
Thank you for having me. I’m glad to be here.
It’s very exciting to get to talk to people who have done, you know, unique things, I’m sure you probably get asked by our physician colleagues all the time, about your transition. So you may be able to, to have a lot of the answers to all the questions.
In fact, you might know the questions better than I do. So I’ll ask you what I think people want to know, but you let me know, what else do you think people want to know. But if you don’t mind, let’s start I guess with just a little bit about your background. Can you tell me you know, take us from your training, you know, and your choice to go to anesthesiology, and then sort of what what led you to take your career in a new direction?
Okay, sure. Well, I actually graduated from medical school probably about… I think it was 18 years ago, and I was actually a navy physician and knew that I wanted to do anesthesia from medical school. I really enjoyed the anesthesia rotation that I had while I was in medical school. But then the Navy because they love to break up internship and residency, I spent five years as a flight surgeon, after I did my transitional internship.
I had a blast doing that! Got to have 100 hours in the backseat of an F 18 Hornet, got to experience crazy things, trips around the world. And then and then once I knew my tour was coming up or my flight surgery, it was time for me to apply for residency, did a civilian anesthesia residency.
And it’s really then that I started to even think about maybe clinical medicine wasn’t for me, and it was not that I didn’t love anesthesia. I do, I love anesthesia. But I looked around and there were other things encroaching on actual practicing or practicing or doing the craft of anesthesia.
But you know, everyone said, “Oh, keep your head down. residency is just residency and then once you’re in attending, everything’s going to be you know, rainbows and flowers and everything.” That’s what they say. That’s what they say, right?
So my husband is also military, he’s a military. He’s a Marine Corps pilot. And we got stationed in Arizona, and my first big girl anesthesia job was at a private practice. Group, and I actually loved it. And it was all only anesthesiologist and you got to sit your own cases, and it was great. And like I said, it was fee for service, you could work as hard as you wanted, you could work as little as you wanted because, you know, people wanted to make money.
So they could they would, they would take your call and they would they would do all these things, you know, or you know, you could work as little as you wanted, because the month was, you know, whatever important I remember one of the anesthesiologist took a whole month off just to go fishing. And so it was a great work life balance.
With that, that type of model and I was like, “Oh, this is great.” You know, anesthesia is great. And you know As my mind was changed, and so I was I was very happy as an anesthesiologist. And then we had to move again, because my husband’s military and we ended up moving to Virginia and in Virginia, it’s a very different model, you know. In the hospitals, it seemed like, again, the anesthesiologists weren’t happy again, and the bureaucracy kind of took over.
And so COVID hits, you know, there wasn’t a lot of PPE, they’re asking us to work over time. You know, do more with less. This is what you signed up for. And that’s when I went back to thinking about maybe this isn’t for me. I, you know, This is relatively recent, I you spent a fair amount of time practicing as an anesthesiologist?
Yes. Yeah. About eight years. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so sorry, so COVID Yes. I mean, everybody, I’m sure every, I’m assuming, you know, I’m sure every physician felt that drain at that moment in time. was really hard for me to come home. I mean, we, I had my ritual where I stripped down in the garage I had, my children weren’t allowed to touch me, you know, I’d have to go up, and I’d have to shower and have to put all my clothes in the laundry before they were even allowed to hug me.
And, you know, that’s again, when I was just like, okay, is this really worth it to me? Because, one, I don’t, my family is everything to me, uh, you know, and not that, you know, but I, once I started having children, I started to think less about, oh, this is a good career for me. I kept thinking about, I’m missing things with my girls, you know, I’m missing the recital, I’m missing their bedtime. I’m missing this. And I mean, my girls are young still. I mean, they’re seven and five. And then my son is a year.
Again, that started nagging on me, I actually went to part time, at that point, when COVID hit, there was a lot of feeling with that, like, I don’t feel like this is, this is worth it to me, because I’m risking my family, and that the money is not worth it, because I’m risking my family. So I got my Florida license. I’m now in Florida, because we knew my husband was going to be moving to Florida. So now this is again, this is the third move since I graduated from residency. And I got my Florida license with every intention of going back into the hospital. While I was house hunting, I found out I was pregnant with my son.
Now, I’m old. I was 42 when I found out that I was pregnant with my son, he was kind of an oops. We won’t tell him what, yes, I love him. He’s adorable. But COVID was starting to be on the rise again. And Florida has a very different policy on COVID than some where I was coming from Virginia. And I did not want to go back into the hospital, knowing the work schedule and the patient population pregnant, especially advanced maternal age pregnancy.
And so my husband is very supportive. He’s like, “Well, what do you wanna do?” So right before we move down here, I contacted the college here, one of the colleges here and I emailed the department heads specifically I found, you know, you know, there’s two universities here, I emailed the department heads and to see whether or not I could get a response from somebody just, you know..
Within the university, so okay, I want to be sure we don’t jump too much. So it sounds like basically, from the time of training, and onwards sort of in a ebbs and flows way, you are not entirely sure that clinical medicine was it for you? Yeah. And then there became an increasing sort of difference in your values in terms of what you really wanted to be doing and what was most important to you with your family versus what you were actually doing? And then maybe COVID was just like the straw that broke the back like a catalyst for you during that pregnancy. Is that fair?
Yes, I would say I would say there wasn’t so much COVID It was actually just being pregnant again.
And you decided you wanted to do something different. But at that time did you know you wanted? Did you know what you wanted to do? Like when you were reaching out to the universities? Or was it more like, I have no idea what I want to do? Is there anything I can do?
Yes, I had no idea. It was just basically putting out some feelers just because I thought, well, maybe I could just adjunct or teach a few classes here and there, just to get my feet wet to see as this is something that I enjoy. Because I remember when I was, you know, in the residency and even when I was in the Arizona private practice, they didn’t have an anesthesia residency there, but they had other residences there.
So I had other residents coming through where I was able to talk to them about anesthesia and teach. And I really enjoyed that aspect of it. And seeing like, faces light up when they when something made sense to them, and that there was like, there was just a little reward there. You know, when there was an aha moment. And so it’s just putting feelers out there still planning on doing anesthesia.
When I got to Florida, 20 weeks into my pregnancy, I found out that I have placental insufficiency. And my son had severe intrauterine growth restriction. So I’ve had to get scanned twice a week. So they wanted to do aggressive, excuse me aggressive monitoring twice a week. At that point, I knew there was no way I could work in the hospital because you just don’t have time. You can’t leave for a doctor’s appointment in the middle of the day. Who knows how long the appointments going to take and then come back.
Yeah, so what kind of schedule or flexibility, there’s just no way to do that? Yeah, right. So the college though, they the department had emailed me back said here, fill out this adjunct paperwork, we’ll do a background check. You send your transcripts from medical school, not even like they didn’t. They didn’t even care about residency, they just wanted to know that I had taken anatomy and physiology. And I had taken the science classes and what my grades were.
And I was kind of floored by that actually. I was like, oh, okay, well, that’s a long time ago. And so did you, when you reached out to the college, you reached out to the Department of anatomy and physiology, or was it the medical school? Who exactly did you reach out to?
At my college, it was the Department of Natural Sciences. But what I ended up doing, I just ended up going on to the college websites, and seeing what classes they talked and then looking to see what department they fell under. And then once I was snooping through the websites, then I found the department head’s email address and emailed them that way.
So this was like online sleuthing with the idea of teaching sort of loosely in mind, no idea really what that would look like, and then cold outreach to these department heads? Yes. Yeah. That’s awesome. Oh, yeah, I didn’t know what’s this, what’s gonna work?
So then what did you ask them? You ask them? Like, if you can even remember, like, how did you phrase? Do you have anything for me? Like, how like, what was that like?
Yes. So it was during summer time. And I emailed him directly, and I said, introduced who I was, I said, my name is Dr. Jennifer Wortendyke, and I’m interested in teaching a college science classes. I am currently a board certified anesthesiologist, but I am looking to leave clinical medicine and transition into college teaching or something to that. Is there something available that I could teach, you know, please let me know. You know…
That’s great. Yeah, what I love about that, too, is you sort of put a stake in the ground in that outreach. Like, I want to leave clinical medicine and I want to go into college teaching. But I don’t know, in your mind, I don’t know. Was it quite that solid? Or were you just like, this is how this, you know, this is how this conversation needs to go. I would be open to other things, but this is how this conversation needs to go with this person. Right?
You’re right. Yeah, I still had no idea. In fact, I wasn’t. I wasn’t even sure if I was going to be good at it. I wasn’t sure that I would even like it. But at that moment in time, when I was so stressed out about what was going on with my son, I was like, well, I want to do something. But I don’t want to go back into the hospital. Right.
The interview process was me doing a Zoom meeting and teaching about the muscle contraction. Okay, so they because they had to give like a demo, present to them on Zoom.
So I didn’t create a PowerPoint or anything like that, I had a whiteboard. And a couple days beforehand, I reviewed the muscle contraction. And I drew some pictures out on the muscle contraction and the action potential and everything like that. And then I had 20 minutes to present this muscle contraction lecture. And then yeah, and then basically, that’s how I got the job.
I felt like that’s so important. Because, you know, you have obviously, I think, as all of us do, really a fair amount of teaching experience, just from being even a more senior resident, and then being an attending. And, you know, even if you don’t have an official residency program, in your institution, if there are learners of any kind, there’s opportunities to teach. And then if there are not, we’re always learning from and teaching each other. So really think about it, like, “Oh, do you have the skills to be a college professor?” I mean, obviously, like hands down, of course you do, right?
Yeah, yes. So they gave me originally, I was just going to teach a couple of classes. And then probably the week before the fall semester started now, my nerves, I’m just nervous. I don’t know what I’m doing. You know, I’ve started studying the material, like, I was in medical school again, because you know, this, you’re so far removed from basic anatomy and physiology. This in and so I’m like…
Okay, well, that’ll refresh. But did you have to build a curriculum from scratch? Or? No. Okay.
So the beautiful thing is that because of the colleges and universities want the students to get the same material. They already had a PowerPoint setup. Like I will say, the camaraderie amongst the college instructors in at least in my group. It’s amazing. Like, everybody wants to help each other out. They all they there’s no competition. They just wanted me to succeed. They wanted me to do well.
So they set me up with this master course, canvas class with the PowerPoints already in there. With study materials already in there. All I had to do was create my own quizzes and exams. So but those resources for that. Did you have to deliver lectures and things like that, too? Yes. So yeah, so Right. So right before I started, they’re like, “Oh, can you be an emergency full time?” And I was like, Okay, well, can I still go to my doctor’s appointments? Yeah, we can work around your doctor’s appointments. Okay.
So for full time at the college, it’s 35 hours a week. And that includes 10 hours of office hours. So I’m really only keeping about one to 25 hours a week. And the rest of the time, I’m sitting in my office waiting for students to come and ask questions. But they’re flexible on the office hours, like you can say, you know, I have my office hours on Monday and Wednesday from, you know, 11 to 12. I don’t know. But if you have an appointment, you can say you can send an email out to your students and say, hey, you know, it’s either virtual hours or email me if you have questions.
So the very first day, oh, I was so nervous. I was so nervous, you know. And when all I can, all I remembered was one of the instructors was like, you know, more than them. They don’t know that you’re that, you know, they don’t know if this is your first time. They don’t know. Yeah, so I just remember I talk so fast, like I had 50 cups of coffee. And, but I had to do like three classes in a row.
So it was just the introductory class. So it wasn’t like I was actually teaching anything at that moment in time, either. It was just going over the syllabus, and it was tense. Right. So once I got that first day under my belt, it’s almost like I simmer down a little bit because after talking three hours in a row of the same exact thing, even though I was just talking about myself and the syllabus and this, I calm down and I’m like, I can do this. But again, I was so nervous. I mean, cuz it’s something new. It was out of the box. It was again still something I didn’t know that I would even enjoy.
Then I started teaching the actual material. And the students were amazing. Now granted, I had some that were not. But they were all pre med, pre nursing pre PA, so into whatever I was talking about, and they had so many questions about the clinical atmosphere.
And I want to be an anesthesiologist, I want to do this, like, Can I do this as a nurse? Can I do this? How do I get here? And so it was almost like molding clay. Yeah. And that much more than anatomy and physiology are really like, so much mentoring and development of people. Yes. And it was just, I don’t know, it was almost like, I feel like I was meant to do this.
And that other was that, that feeling that was lacking when I was actually practicing clinical medicine. It was just, I was missing something. And I think I am getting what I was missing when I was teaching. And I don’t know if it’s just because of the way that the students react to me and that, that whole they’re so excited that they haven’t been jaded yet, by the bureaucracy, they haven’t been jaded by all the things that comes along that nobody tells you about with medical school and residency and everything like that. And they’re just so excited to learn whatever you’re talking about, and, and they’re like little sponges that just want to absorb all this information.
And you know what, I am not trying to deter anybody from going into clinical medicine, because we need really good people. We need good nurses, we need good PAs, we need good physicians, you know, there’s always going to be a need for good people in the field. And my reasoning for leaving clinical medicine is my own personal reasons.
And that’s not that I don’t love anesthesia, I loved giving drugs to people and watching what happens on the screen, they had low blood pressure, go high blood pressure, or you know, high heart rate go to low heart rate, whatever it was, I love doing that. I love seeing physiology right before my eyes.
Me too, that was the best. I mean, it’s really, really interesting, because, you know, I have always, I personally feel like, we need, you know, really strong and well intended people with integrity physicians at every table across health care.
And I include, you know, the insurance companies in that. I work in the pharmaceutical industry, you’ve got the medical device industry, all of the places not just in the clinic, and also the admin of the hospital systems and stuff. If you don’t have health care professionals in there, then we’re really abdicating our ability to shape and influence healthcare in the grand scheme. And what I’m hearing from you is basically the exact same thing.
I mean, I had not really thought about it at the undergraduate college level. But what you are doing, you know, is absolutely bringing that that physician perspective and influencing an entire generation of people to go be really excellent clinicians. And so I mean, I just think that’s incredibly valuable, and is absolutely doctoring.
Thank you, yes, I just, I don’t know, like I said, there’s something about it. And then I kept getting, so you get evaluated by your students every semester. And I would get glowing evaluations. And and they would say, just some of the nicest things. And yes, these are college students and their kids, but there was something about that innocence and how I was inspiring them.
And there was even last year there was an essay that one of the English professors gave an assignment “who inspired you?”, and somebody wrote an essay on me and the, I don’t know who it was.
But the instructor actually emailed me a copy of this essay, just because it was so beautifully written. And it was so nice, you know, that she was there was a female, she was so happy to see a female physician and that’s what she wants to do. And then that to see stem professors and all that and then and then this year… That’s so powerful Wow.
And then I just got nominated last semester for a Teaching Excellence Award, which is nominating from the students. And so there’s that there. Again, I know that they’re, they’re college students, and they’re, you know, there’s that innocence about them, but to be nominated by them. You know, when He, you know, most of them teenagers, 20 somethings, they got a whole lot of opinions. You know?
Yeah. It’s an enormous honor really, because I’m sure they, you know, they probably are pretty selective about who they think highly of. Right. Really inspired them, and you’ve really connected with them. I think the fact that they’re young and sort of in their pre professional years is all the more reason why they probably have a pretty low tolerance for mediocre professional, you know, and I just, I can see why that would be incredibly meaningful and impactful to be on the receiving end of that and knowing the impact you’re making. Right.
And so, other than locums, and like endoscopy, like looking at different types of models of an anesthesiologist practice, other than that, and this outreach to the college, were there any other major career options floating around that you are entertaining with any seriousness at that time?
I was thinking about being a real estate agent. I actually got my real estate license. I think I was just so I love studying, I’m such a nerd.
You need something to really scratch that itch. I get it.
Yeah. And so I was interested because the housing market was crazy at that time, and we were buying our house in Florida, and I was like, “Oh, I can do this.”
I love that too. Because a lot of people do ask, you know, when people are thinking about when they’re thinking about sort of second careers, career pivots, whether it’s non clinical medicines, a lot of people just kind of want to do something totally different. Right? They really just have a thirst for a lot of different experiences in life, which I see no problem with. And so a lot of people I’ve met, I’ve heard people ask, you know, what can I do that’s got literally nothing to do with medicine, just a totally different chapter. So it’s very interesting to hear you say that. So you got your real estate license. That’s great.
I did get my real estate license, which I met, and I’ve kept it up. So. So when we actually leave here, and a year and a half, I plan on selling the house. So I’m like, alright, well, at least still. I mean, it’s, you know, it was interesting to learn about the housing market and learn about, you know, the housing laws and everything like that, but, but I actually thought that I was gonna go back to the hospital after Kevin was born, and when, so he made it to 37 weeks.
And but when he was born, he was four pounds. And there was, thankfully, he was a warrior didn’t need any NICU time was breathing fine. Everything was good, other than the fact that he was tiny. That’s amazing. Yeah, so he, I mean, even the preemie clothes were just huge on him.
So I was on my maternity leave. And it actually fell right in between fall and spring semester. So that worked out pretty well. Another benefit of being an instructor is that I have five weeks off in between fall and spring, and then you don’t have to work summer at all. Which is awesome.
So even though I had every intention of going back to the hospital, I feel like life pulled me in the direction that I was still going, you know, that no, you need to continue what you’re doing here.
And so, you know, we have physical therapy, he’s actually doing great in physical therapy, he’s now at a point where he is cruising and all that stuff. So the goal for him is, you know, to be walking by February, which we’ll see what happens, but, but because of the physical therapy, and the neurology appointments, and the, the MRIs, and all these things that I had to do, there was no possible way for me to go back to the hospital.
So we still do physical therapy, we still have to have these doctor’s appointments, and I just love that with the environment. I’m in there. So okay, with me scheduling these appointments. So humane, so remarkable. But that’s the normal.
You know, and but I feel like if I were to go into the hospital, it wouldn’t be that way, which is sad. No, they wouldn’t be able to do that. They, I mean, first of all, the environment. I just feel like from a cultural point of view, is generally not that just not that humane. It doesn’t prioritize family or even health. But, but also, I mean, I have sympathy for the fact that these departments are huge, and it’s a giant machine, health care systems. And in order to take good care of patients, they, I mean, they almost they do need to know where all their cogs in the wheel are going right.
And they need people in those spots and they can’t, I understand where they can’t reasonably accommodate A lot of the things or it would be just a big shift in culture, to try to be supportive of the kinds of, you know, a situation that you’re describing. And that I’ve experienced too. I mean, it’s remarkable, though, how outside of clinical medicine, it’s just such a norm, right?
You have a doctor’s appointment, even if you have many, you gotta think it’s normal. You gotta recital, of course go to that, right, like, normal. It’s normal life. It’s just not normal life for most doctors.
Right. And which, to me, is sad, because for the most part, we’re supposed to be promoting health, we’re supposed to be promoting happiness. And that includes mental health. COVID did start that wheel a little bit more like I was used to missing things, even though I was sad about it and I was mad about it.
But it really wasn’t until COVID. In realizing how little regard there actually was for physicians, with not having PPE and some of the comments that people would make. Well, you signed up for this. No, I didn’t. I signed up to join the military, I knew that there’s a possibility I could die when I joined the military. When I walk into the hospital, I didn’t sign up for that. No, I didn’t sign up. I didn’t, I didn’t sign any papers, say, putting my name on the dotted lines, and I’m willing to die for this profession.
And the development in fact, it’s the opposite. I mean, we always learn you know, in, even in basic BLS, right, basic life support, you survey the scene first, and you only enter if it’s safe to do so, like the whole idea of putting yourself in physical jeopardy in healthcare is I mean, that’s just not consistent. That’s just actually not part of the paradigm at all.
Right. And even though I had these feelings in the back of my mind, from residency, I never thought I would actually act upon it. Until COVID. Where again, the way that yes in the beginning, everybody was, you know, clapping, we’re healthcare heroes, and yada, yada, yada. Yeah.
But as time went on, and there was the COVID deniers, and, you know, people who were anti Vax, and all this other stuff, and it was just, we were still going to work, you know, exposing ourselves and potentially our loved ones, and everybody else is going on with their lives as if nothing’s going on.
And I’m like, what am I doing, you know, this is still just a job, this is still just a job. And I did have the feelings of “I am giving up something that I worked so hard for.” And my husband was just like, you know, you can always go back to it. And I was like, okay, you know, just take a break, just take a break, I have been working since I was 15 years old. And the only time I have ever taken a break, which if you can call it a break, is maternity leave.
Which you cannot call a break. I won’t accept that.
And so, finally, with this third pregnancy, I was forced to take a break, you know, I was forced to just stop and reevaluate the situation. And look at my family, look at the environment, look at what was going on, you know, again, COVID was going back up, that was still not endemic status, it was still, you know, scary to everyone. And I took a chance, and I ended up loving what I do.
And now it sounds so aligned with your values to like your core values. And I can tell just from this conversation, how much it fills you up to do the work that you’re doing today.
Yes. And when I get my paycheck and it hurts, don’t get me wrong.
Well, so I would love to ask you about that. You’re in the military. So did you have student loans? Because that’s something that weighs over a lot of people heavily when they think about leaving.
So I did have student loans from undergrad because I come from a blue collar family. I’m the first physician in my family. And I still had to take out some loans because when they’re covering medical school, they cover the tuition, they cover books and they give you a stipend.
I did medical school in Chicago, and the stipend was not enough. So I had undergraduate loans and then I had a little bit from medical school. And so we’re pretty frugal. My husband. We made an agreement when I first started making attending money that first year I would pay off my student loans. Oh, yeah. I was debt free after a year.
Fantastic. Okay, great. So then you were talking about how it hurts when you get your pay paychecks. So obviously, this is a question on everybody’s mind is how much of the payout will they need to take? Everybody earns different amounts, and they’re different clinical specialties and across the geographies, and whether you’re in academics or private practice or whatever. But can you put any more specificity around like what kind of a salary does an undergrad college professor make?
So it depends if you’re in a private university or not, but less than 100,000 a year. So it is a big pay cut, but you get summers off and you get those breaks, and you don’t have to work weekends. I feel like the benefits just out like I think I feel like the only con really is the money. That’s the only con to me and money isn’t everything. So the time off is amazing. I work out now, crazy. I get to go to the doctor’s appointments.
It’s so like my schedule. So I’m going to start spring semester on Monday. Monday, I’m going I started my first classes at 9:30. And I am done at 2:20. So Friday, I work from 9:30 to 11:20.
Yeah, that’s those hours, right. And you mentioned this before, but I just want to circle back to because a lot of people will ask whether they need additional training additional degrees, or whatever to go about pivoting their careers in whatever direction for you, you basically needed your undergrad transcript and to be able to demonstrate that you can teach an interview lecture.
Yes, it was so much easier than I thought it was going to be. I thought that I would have to get some certification. And I even asked in an email, do I need to do anything? And no, I didn’t.
And my last question for you is, are there any questions that you get asked a lot that I have… not that we haven’t covered yet today?
I get a question of, “Well, did you have to study it before you taught it?” Yes, I did. I had to completely refresh. But I only did that for the first semester. Because after you learn it again. It’s there, you know, and it’s so much easier like so I did all this work the very first semester of studying and making my exams and making my quizzes. And then every semester after that, it was easy peasy lemon squeezy.
That’s super, this is. So I think going to be a really inspiring episode for a lot of people because it really, I think highlights you know how you can really love what you’re doing clinically, but still have another career fit that’s just more right for you, based on the things that you value the most in life and that you have the transferable skills to literally just pick up and start doing something else. That really fills your cup in that way. And it’s just really so cool. What a great story. Thank you for sharing it with me and my listeners.
Thank you for having me.
Great to talk to you, Jenn. Thank you.
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