A: I don’t advise anybody to follow in anybody else’s footsteps. They should follow their passions, but at the same time, be open to change; be open to doing different things. There were a whole host of things in my life that I thought I would never do. So my advice would be to be willing to experience new things; don’t say “It’s not me. I can’t do that;” whether it’s being on an executive committee or doing a different kind of research or whatever.

I remember when I was intern and I started work in an alcoholic treatment unit. It became clear that in order to do my job, I had to “get down and dirty”. So I found myself at the local Skid row bar at 7am drinking scotch with the patrons. The patrons, who were most often on some form of public assistance, lived in a room above the bar. The proprietor would maintain a running tab after receiving their checks. The patrons hung out there drinking as long as their funds lasted.

So you need to find an active way to try to experience the lived-in world of the people you are trying to understand. Theoretical knowledge alone is insufficient. If you’re working with schizophrenics, get under the bed with the catatonic schizophrenic and try to figure out what’s going on; lie there for hours with them if you need to.

Beware of having very rigid boundaries of what you can and cannot do. Try things even if they seem a bit strange for you. And if you try out different things the possibility exists of course, that it may also change you. You may realize that you do have this particular ability in your repertoire.