I decided I wanted to become a psychiatrist when I was 11 years old. At that time, I had no idea what psychiatrists really did, but it seemed like a terrific idea, and helping others felt like a good way to spend one's life. I most certainly had no idea what an academic psychiatrist did.

For many, an academic is someone who does research, publishes research, and may lecture about that research. In some institutions, the only people who really are considered “academics” are those who bring in grant money to do research, and who publish in peer-reviewed journals; education is important, but not necessarily the task of such academics. I view being an academic psychiatrist as having the responsibility to learn a variety of different things in order to be able to educate others. This means that just knowing a lot, or just seeing patients, or just doing research is not sufficient to be an academic psychiatrist. It means that one needs to try to become as learned as possible in a variety of different areas in order to help others educate themselves. The goal of the education is to enable others to provide the highest quality of clinical care to patients. This is a daunting task. It creates a constant struggle to keep learning, and a constant sense of doubt that I don’t know enough.

It makes for a long day. Each day is filled with seeing patients, for "book-learning" has little value unless one applies it actively. It is only in the clinical encounter that one really learns how to modify “facts” in the real world of people in need of treatment. Each day contains time supervising, be it answering questions, seeing patients with residents, struggling with the many ethical and legal issues that confront us regularly, and “formal” teaching, such as lectures. Reading and writing are typically not confined to “work hours,” as there is not enough time to do everything at work.

Don’t misunderstand me; there are many evenings that I watch television, particularly during baseball season. There are also many evenings and weekends during which I read and write. A key element of being an academic psychiatrist, in my view, is that I enjoy what I do. Thus, “working” in the evening is not painful. I did not plan to have this type of career. I came to medicine to learn how to help others. I chose psychiatry because I felt it was a career where the element of therapy was how I could understand the suffering of another person, to enable that person to understand how to change, be it via psychotherapy or psychopharmacology. Academic psychiatry allowed me to find my true self, not by design, but by following my natural inclinations. I did not know that I had an ability to educate or how enjoyable it was to learn in order to share that knowledge with other people. I am thankful that I work in a place that still supports such endeavors.