9 to 5ish: Audie Cornish

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Before Audie Cornish made the jump to CNN, she was a longtime co-host of NPR’s All Things Considered. And while she made interviewing politicians and celebs look like NBD, she says she had to deal with a “professional identity crisis” after becoming a new mom. This week, we sat down with Audie to talk about how her professional life changed after she had kids, and how motherhood impacted her mindset at work. 

On Being a New Working Mom

Audie: If you're really ambitious, you spend so much time, especially as a femme or woman in the workplace, basically being like, this is who I am. This is why you should take me seriously. Look at me. I'm putting in the most hours than anyone. I'm speaking up at all the meetings and I'm super prepared. And you spend a lot of time preparing for and making yourself ready for the work, whatever your work is. And all of a sudden you don't have that. You just don’t have it. You haven't slept. Your baby has decided to be in the middle of its sleep regression or only wants to breastfeed or only wants a bottle feed. All of these things that will go by quickly. But it's just so intense. It's another whole job. And the thing that people don't tell you in all the movies, is that you want to be doing it.

On Being in the Right Job at the Right Time

Audie: There's the feeling of, I have mastered this job. Then there's this feeling of, I think I can do this with little to no effort. But the caveat is that when I had my kids, I was really grateful to be in a job that I had mastered. Because I didn't have to be going at the pace I had gone. When I was younger. I knew how to conduct five interviews a day. I knew where to focus. And I knew how to compartmentalize. This is the kind of thing that I think people should process a little bit more for themselves, which is: there's a right job for you and a right time to be doing that job. You know, you may be in a great job and it may not be the right time in your life to be doing it.