This paper catalogues the inevitable problems that beset training directors and describes coping strategies designed to improve the likelihood of the training director's survival and the quality of his or her life. The difficulties of the job include picking residents, struggling to assure that the faculty provides decent teaching programs, contending with repetitive bureaucratic details, being overloaded by numerous tasks, and warily watching as residents who somehow squeaked through the program are sent off on their own. Offsetting the hassles are the exciting jobs of picking residents, guiding the faculty in setting up teaching programs, keeping a complicated program running, mastering numerous challenges, and watching with satisfaction as new, competent psychiatrists graduate.Abstract Teaser