The Decision Before The Application.

I didn’t set out to become a CRNA.

I started as a pharmacy major because I didn’t think I wanted to work with people. I thought I could stay behind a counter and keep some distance. That idea did not last long. My internship at Walgreens made that impossible and soon after, I picked up a position working in a group home for adults with disabilities. It changed how I understood myself. It became harder to ignore that the issue was never the people. It was the setting. I had just not been in the right one yet.

From there, nursing made more sense.

Even then, CRNA wasn’t the plan. It was in the background, but not something I was actively moving toward. When it came time to choose my senior internship, I knew I wanted to be on the sickest unit I could get into. That decision put me in the CVICU. It’s also where I started as a new graduate.

At the time, it felt like where I belonged, but I still wanted more.

I had briefly considered becoming a Nurse Practitioner. It seemed like the next step most people take. But I kept coming back to pharmacology, physiology and the motions of an ICU nurse that kept me asking “why.” By the time I started seriously thinking about CRNA school, the pattern had been there for awhile. I already had most of what I needed to apply. I just hadn’t connected it yet.

That is usually how the decision happens. People talk about prerequisites, shadowing hours, and application timelines as though the process begins there. Most of the time, it doesn’t. By the time someone is asking how to apply, the direction has often already been set much earlier, in the kinds of work they are drawn to and the things they keep returning to.

I didn’t make a plan. I didn’t sit down and map anything out. But from that point on, the direction was set. The decisions that followed weren’t about choosing a path. They were about catching up to one I had already started moving down.

I did not know all along. But once it became clear, the plan came together quickly.