Alden was bartending at Chili's. Then she met a couple of respiratory therapists, and that conversation changed her whole life.

She became an RT first. Loved it, and then hit the ceiling of what she was allowed to do. That's a feeling a lot of you know well - you're in the room, you understand what's happening, and you can't be the one to make the call. So she went after PA.

Her academic record wasn't spotless. She had to retake classes. And she was strategic about where she applied, because holistic review meant her whole story counted, not just a number on a transcript. Nine applications, four interviews, two acceptances. That's a strong return, and it wasn't luck.

If you're a career changer sitting on some old grades you're not proud of, this one's for you.

What we cover:

• Going from bartending to respiratory therapy to PA school
• Why she wanted more than her RT scope allowed
• Retaking classes and rebuilding a GPA that wasn't working
• Picking programs that do holistic review, and how to spot them
• Her actual application numbers and what she thinks made the difference
• Advice for anyone switching careers into medicine later than planned

Resources:

Free PA School Application Timeline: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/free-application-timeline

CASPA GPA Calculator: https://www.thepaplatform.com/pa-school-caspa-gpa-calculator

PA Program Map: https://www.thepaplatform.com/pa-platform-map

Pre-PA Counseling: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/pre-pa-counseling

Mentioned in this episode:

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Alright.

We love a good career change.

So today we have Alden, who started out working at the bar in Chili's, which you're gonna love this story, became a respiratory therapist and ended up in PA school.

So get ready.

This is a really good one and a great story.

Welcome to the Pre PA Club podcast.

If you want to learn how to.

Become a physician assistant, you're in the right place.

I'm your host, Savannah Perry.

Let's get to it.

Hello, welcome to the Prepa Club podcast.

If you are currently participating in our PA School Personal Statement Challenge, I am so proud of you for sticking in there and I hope that you've gotten a lot out of it.

If you're like, what are you talking about?

You can always sign up.

We did this together.

But you can always sign up for the two week challenge at the PA platform.com personal statement where we go through an email course over two weeks to get you a draft of your personal statement done.

So that's been really fun.

I wanted to also let y' all know, at the end of this month, on January 30th, I'm doing a live personal statement editing webinar.

So the link to sign up for that is in the description.

It is $5.

Just the webinar software I have is.

Very expensive, so want to make sure also that you are invested in this.

That's less than a coffee, but it should be a good time.

And when you sign up, you can submit your draft to be one that may or may not be chosen to be edited.

If you want to do that, want to put yourself out there.

We won't disclose whose is whose, but that's an option you have, so that should be fun.

And I think you're going to really like today's episode.

So Alden is with us and she just has a really cool story.

She's very encouraging, encouraging.

And I think her story is just a great example of like, you just never know where you're going to end up.

You just never know.

And you need to be open to anything that comes your way.

Ask questions, talk to people.

But it's a really great story, so we'll get to that.

And then don't forget, if you need help with anything right now, as far as prepay counseling, personal statement editing, the books, the personal statement guide or interview guide, you can always use the code Future PA on the website for a.

Discount and and feel free to reach.

Out on Instagram if you have any questions or email me directly.

Sure.

My name is Alden Mustard.

I'M originally from Florida, So let's see.

So I'm 34.

So my path to PA has not always been a path to being a PA. To be completely honest, I kind of did a lot of different things in the meantime.

I worked neonatal pediatrics.

Adults took some travel assignments throughout that.

After about my first year or so, I decided that I wanted to become a PA.

I knew what PAs were, but until I started working in the hospital setting, I really didn't truly understand what PAs did.

So I got more of a.

More of an exposure.

And so I decided to become a.

Pa,.

Looked at what I had to take as far as classes, which was quite a lot.

And because I also just, you know, was doing this a little bit later in the game, there were classes I had to retake because they were quite old.

So I just did what I needed to do.

I just made a list of the classes that I was going to take.

I took them, took the gre and started applying.

And.

Yeah, and so for.

I just completed my first semester.

And so for that.

For that class, for the 20.

20.

2021 Application, I got four interviews, two acceptances, and two wait lists and decided on Rush University here in Chicago.

Nice.

So that's different from Florida.

Yes, very different from Florida.

Oh, I want to back up a little bit and we'll kind of get PA school stuff, because I want to know what brought you to respiratory therapy and kind of medicine in general.

What kind of brought you into wanting to do that?

So medicine was always something that I had an interest in.

I don't have anybody in my family that's really in the medical field other than my uncle.

He's a physical therapist.

But pretty much what happened?

I was a bartender at Chili's, and there was this couple that used to come in every once in a while, and I knew they worked in the medical field.

I didn't really know.

And they were talking about their profession, and they were both respiratory therapists.

I had no idea what that was, but they kind of explained.

One day I just struck up a conversation.

It was slow.

And I just asked them about what they did, and I just told them.

I said, I'll be completely honest with you, I have no idea what a respiratory therapist is.

And they explained it to me.

I did some of my own research, and I said, this is kind of cool.

I've always been interested in the medical field.

Let me try this.

And I looked at the requirements.

I only had to take one class because I had gotten my AA previously when I really didn't have any direction.

So I just got a general aa.

So I only had to take one class.

I applied and I got in and I loved was great.

It was very much what I needed at that time in my life.

I needed something not quick necessarily, but I liked the action of it.

I liked being put in these very.

To be quite honest, I liked being put in these emergent life or death situations and being required to think on my feet.

So it was a very good fit for me at the time.

Oh my gosh, I love that story.

That's just so random but awesome and I love it and it made me want Chili's, but that is just.

That is so cool.

Like the random, you know, little life events that make a big impact and you never know who you impact either in those ways and rt.

So I am going to get you to explain a little bit about respiratory therapists and what you do as a respiratory therapist in case anyone's listening and doesn't know because it is great experience.

Like you have to actually know stuff.

I was a cna.

You don't really have to know that much as a cna.

You know, vital skills and paying attention to your patients.

But the, you're not necessarily providing medical care in those cases, but respiratory, those teams, I mean, they are the ones.

My husband's a hospitalist and he's like, oh yeah, we call, we call the team.

We call the team.

Like, you know, they, y' all are important.

And the hospital would be lost without respiratory.

So what did that entail?

Well, as far as both the education, like what is the education for that and then what does that look like as a job?

Sure.

First of all, thank you for the shout out to respiratory.

Sometimes we are the unspoken entity of the, of the hospital system.

So as far as education, I did a two and a half year AS degree, which is the entry level requirement.

It's very similar to nursing where, I mean, they're going towards a bachelor's and you know, that's a requirement now.

But just for the sake of comparison.

Yeah, I did a two year, two and a half year AS degree and schooling was, I mean, pretty intense from the very beginning.

We were learning about life or death situations and you're learning it so conceptually and then all of a sudden you go into your clinical rotations and they just stick you in the trauma bay and these, you know, so there's a lot of hands on is pretty much what I'm getting at a lot of lab time, but there is also a lot of class time, too.

There's a lot of the very equally balanced between respiratory therapy theory as well as lab time and clinical rotations.

So it's very rigorous, it's not easy.

And the coursework is actually very challenging as well because you're learning a lot of things on the molecular level.

You're learning things that you can't actually see.

You just have to picture it in your head, which is not easy sometimes.

Yeah.

So when I graduated, I got a job in Orlando at Winnie Palmer Hospital.

I worked in the level 3, 4 neonatal ICU.

Those little tubes.

Yeah.

Yes, yes, yes.

And so with that being said, respiratory is a.

As far as a job and as far as a career.

And I mean, I think this goes for a lot of things.

But just to say it is essentially what you make of it.

You can work in adult critical care, you can work in trauma, you can work pediatrics, neonatal.

I know some people that do flight.

I mean, that obviously takes some years of experience, but there are different avenues that you can take.

And it is very location specific.

There are certain states that don't utilize respiratory as much and which is unfortunate, but I mean, what are you going to do?

But I feel that there really are.

There is a lot more that you can do with it than people may think that there is.

I mean, within five years, I had worked adults, pediatric and neonatal, so.

And you got a good variety of working with different patient types and really honed in on your skills, which is awesome.

So what point in, you know, you finished your RT school, you started working, at what point did you start thinking?

Because it sounded like pretty quickly you were like, oh, I want to do pa.

Were you feeling limited in your role or what kind of made you think, yeah, I want to go towards something else now?

To a certain degree, I felt limited.

Yes.

How do I explain this?

I think it was more of.

I wanted to know more than what was in my scope.

I wanted to be able to do more.

I didn't dislike my job, I didn't dislike my career.

I just got to a point where I was exposed to the nurse practitioners and the PAs that I worked with.

And I saw the broad spectrum of knowledge that they had.

And also, I mean, I thought it was pretty cool that they could put in central lines and do this kind of stuff.

So I felt limited, but not unhappy.

I just got to a point where I said, you know what?

I think I Just want to do more.

I want to be able to do more.

I want to know more.

Yeah.

Okay.

Awesome.

I mean, and I think that's pretty common to kind of, you know, want to expand that scope a little bit.

So like you said, you had to take some classes, go to apply.

What did you look for in programs that you kind of.

When you were applying and looking to become a pa, what were your top priorities?

So my.

One of my top priorities was when I was researching schools is that they specifically stated that they looked at applicants in a holistic way.

That was very important to me because I did have some red flags, unfortunately, in my early college days when I had no direction, I had some Cs, a couple of Ds, you know, so I knew.

And of course, at the time, I never thought that was going to come back to bite me 12, 13 years later.

And so when I submitted everything to Casper and got my gpa.

My Casper gpa.

Okay.

You know, not that great.

Not horrible, but not amazing.

So I knew that that was going to be a potential hurdle.

So I definitely looked.

Schools that stated they took a holistic approach to assessing their applicants.

That was the biggest one.

Trying to think if there was anything else that really stood out to me.

And so you're willing to move that wasn't.

Oh, yeah.

Yes.

Deal breaker kind of thing was the deal breaker.

Okay.

Yeah.

And you.

I think you said you got four interviews.

Did you apply to four programs or did you apply to more than that?

I applied to nine.

I applied to nine schools.

Yeah.

And that's.

I mean, that's a pretty good record.

It's so interesting, I found, just talking to so many people, I feel like every single person in this process has rejection.

Like, you get.

Even the ones with, like, multiple acceptances, like, you're going to get rejected, and sometimes there's no rhyme or reason to it at all.

So anyway, so in your interviews, did any of those red flags come up or did the programs really seem like, you know, we.

We've looked past that.

We're, you know, happy with what you've done since.

Out of my four interviews, there was one school that did ask me to explain my lower GPA and if I remember correctly, asked me explain what else I had done or how I was going to prepare for the rigors of PA school.

So, yes, I was asked about it in one interview.

Okay.

Okay.

I was just curious if they brought that up.

Well, it was nice that you had two programs to choose from with which one you wanted to go for.

Go to what were your deciding factors?

Was there anything at interviews that made you kind of turn off from some programs or anything that made you lean more towards a certain program?

So, I mean, there wasn't, I guess the one, the two that I was, that I had to choose one choose for was between Rush and another program.

And this other program was a bit longer.

Okay.

And I have friends in the Chicago area, so I mean, to be honest, it was just kind of like I thought about it and I said, you know what?

Both programs are great.

It's not really that I prefer one over the other.

The, the one, the other program was about three, three and a half years and Russia's program is about two, two and a half years.

And I said, you know, I don't know if I want to, if I personally don't know if I want to do this for, if I want to go back to school for three and a half years when I can be here for two and a half years and get the same education.

And also Chicago, even though far away from, from Florida, the other program was super far away from Florida.

Really, really far.

So there was a couple of different things that, that influen my decision.

Yeah, I mean, all of that seems completely valid.

And I mean, Link does play a big role.

I mean, and essentially that's a year of earning potential too, versus being in debt an extra year.

So it's, I mean, you kind of have to look at those things for sure.

Well, now that you're in PA school, I wonder if you get this question.

Have you been able to work as a respiratory therapist while in school?

Absolutely not.

What would be your advice to people who think they're going to do that?

My advice, don't do that to yourself.

Just, I mean, I get it.

When you are used to working and you're used to having an income, it is so hard to just throw that out the window and say, okay, yeah, I'm just going to go to school.

And it's human nature to try to convince yourself that you can work because you tell yourself, well, when I was in school, when I was in RT school, when I was doing this, I was able to work.

I did it then, why can't I do it now?

There may be people out there that can do it.

And I'm not discrediting that.

If your program does not have a type of agreement that you have to sign saying that you, you won't work and you are able to do it, hats off to you, I would not be able to do it.

Absolutely not absolutely not.

There is just, I mean, with the amount of information and the amount of studying that you have that, you know, that I had to do.

I'm not even going to use the term you in general that I had to do.

I mean, I was, I got to a point where I was like, well, you know, if I go grocery shopping today, that's going to take like an hour away from my study time.

I mean, that's where I was at.

So imagine like a 12 hour shift somewhere in between that.

It just was not possible for me.

So I mean, advice that I have is just really evaluate if, if this is something that you really want to do.

Because if you really want to work, it's.

You may be able to do it.

It's just going to be so much harder.

So, I mean, a thousand fold harder.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't really know how people would be able to do it at all.

But that is a question that comes up a lot.

In my program.

We were not allowed work at all.

I did a few babysitting shifts, which, I mean that was fine because the kids were asleep and I could study, but otherwise like there was no way at all.

And yeah, so again, hats off if you're able to do that but don't plan on it.

So.

Yeah.

So in general, how has that kind of first semester been?

You're still in like the thick of it, like figuring it out.

It's rough.

Oh, it was very rough.

First semester was really just figuring out what worked for me.

Study habits changed constantly.

At first I was just like, oh, I'm just going to study on my own.

I'm not a good group study or yeah, that changed and I started studying with a few of my classmates.

We would kind of do our own thing and then we would meet after class or we would meet on the weekends, on off days, sit in front of a white board, write things down, come up with mnemonics, ways that we could remember it, and it worked beautifully.

So I mean, that's just one example.

But yeah, I mean, and then just learning how to manage your time.

Some people do well with, I mean, I had what I mean, some people, as in some of my classmates, they, they do really well with studying one subject at a time for four or five hours and they feel like they've mastered it.

I tried that.

That didn't really work for me.

I did a lot better with setting to 2 hour increments and then getting done what I felt I could get done and then moving on to something else.

Do you Feel like your education from respiratory therapy school prepared you at all for PA school or is it just very different?

It's just very different.

There were certain units that might have come a little bit easier for me because I had seen it clinically or I had studied something or I had studied that.

But in the beginning we're learning such basic science stuff that, you know, I don't feel that my training or my education in respiratory really helped.

But in little bits here and there, I'm like, okay, I get that.

I've seen that before.

Yeah.

But it's just, it's just very different.

Very, very different.

It is.

And it's so hard to explain until you're there.

Absolutely.

It really is.

Because it's just, it's its own beast.

And.

Yeah.

But yeah, you'll figure it out.

You get through it.

You figure out how to study.

When it stops working, you change it.

Yes.

Then it flies by and it's done.

But yeah, no, I really do appreciate you kind of sharing your story.

Where do you see yourself ending up?

Do you think you'll go back to kind of a poem role at all?

Like that will involve respiratory or do you see yourself kind of doing something completely different?

You know, I could go either way at this point.

I know that I might gravitate towards palm or ICU because it's a comfort zone.

I know the icu, but I'm very much interested in exploring other avenues.

I mean, I loved when we did endocrinology.

I loved that unit.

Something that I never thought of before and I just happened to really, really like.

So I'm very, very open minded.

Very, very open minded.

That's a good way to be.

Yeah.

I definitely appreciate you being willing to share and really just reaching out.

And I hope this has encouraged maybe some other respiratory therapists or people who are in other roles kind of thinking they want to make the switch, to take those steps and go for it.

Absolutely.

I mean, if I could just add my cohort, we have many non traditional students.

I mean, to name some.

One girl, she was a radiology technician for like 13 years.

Another one of my classmates, she worked in commercial banking for many years and made the switch to pa. Another one of my classmates, he had a career in sales and is now doing this.

So I mean, it's.

Our class is such a mixture of different backgrounds and even people who were not in the medical field and made the change.

So I mean, it is very doable and I mean, and they're killing it.

They're doing great and that's awesome.

Yeah.

And that's what I think makes the profession so cool, is that you do have all these different backgrounds, and as a class, you come together and just connect and learn from each other, and it makes everybody better.

Absolutely.

I've learned so much from my classmates.

I mean, everybody just has this diverse background, you know, and everybody brings something to the table.

I mean, I.

Things that I struggled with, like, I struggled with a little bit of ent.

The.

I wasn't really understanding a lot of things.

And there is one of my classmates that worked in an ophthalmology clinic, and he dumbed it down for us and was like, oh, just look at this.

This, this.

Oh, okay.

You know, so it's.

It's.

That's what I really love about it, especially by my class, is everybody brings something to the table to help out, and it's.

It's great.

It's wonderful.

Yeah.

All in it together.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

No, and that's.

I mean, I think that teamwork aspect just continues once you, you know, are in health care as well.

But.

No, it's a great, great career.

I know it can be scary to kind of branch out and take that step sometimes, especially if you're kind of comfortable in your position, but.

No, I just.

I really do appreciate you taking the time to share.

Oh, of course.

No, thank you.

I know what it's like to be on the other end, and I know what it's like to compare yourself to other applicants.

And for me, personally, I focused on so much about what made me different instead of focusing on what me stand out.

And I've realized there is actually a huge difference, because sometimes when for me, I focused on how I was different from other applicants, it kind of became a negative thing.

I was so focused on the red flags that I wasn't taking time to realize, okay, Alden, you didn't get these interviews and get in because of your red flags.

Right, Exactly.

And that's.

I mean, that's human nature.

We focus on our weaknesses more than our strengths, and that's something definitely, when I'm working with pre PA students, they're so cool, and they have so much cool stuff on their application, but they get focused on, like, one negative thing, and, you know, I was one of them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's natural.

Like, that's just what we do, so.

Absolutely.

I really appreciate you saying that, and I hope everyone listening takes it to heart.

I know it's easier said, hope so,.

Too, because I get it.

I was that person.

I came into it.

I was like, you know, I'm gonna this, this, this and this.

And then I got asked about it one time and that was it.

Yeah, yeah.

And you can't predict.

You can't plan that much.

So that's just how.

How pa.

The PA process goes.

Absolutely, absolutely.

These admissions committees, they're not novices.

They know what they're looking for.

And married, you have to try to keep that in your mind because I didn't.

I was just like,.

If you get to the point of an interview, like, that's such a good thing.

I was.

I forgot what program I was looking at the other day.

I forgot.

But Basically they said 17% of applicants get an interview and 4% of.

4% Of applicants are accepted.

Which that's going to be a higher percentage of those who are interviewed.

But I was like, that's so crazy.

Like, if you get an interview, that's a big deal.

You know that.

That's a really big deal.

So hopefully that gives.

Gives everybody a little bit of confidence too.

I hope so as well, because I know that being a non traditional applicant, I focus so much on that.

And I was just prepared for that rejection of.

Well, I'm just not what they're looking for.

I don't have this broad science background.

And I mean, yes, like, if you have red flags.

Yes.

Like be prepared to address them, but just try not to hyper focus on them.

And I mean, and I know that might sound easy for me to say.

I'm sitting here in PA school.

I'm not trying to be blase and be like, oh, yeah, it'll all work out.

You know, obviously there are hurdles that everybody has to go over.

But I'm just trying to convey.

Try not to make the same mistakes that I did where I focused so much on the negative aspects of my application that I wasn't seeing that.

Okay, I got the interview because of the positives, not because of the negatives.

No, I agree completely, but no, this was super encouraging.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me.

I appreciate it.